JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. - The Newberry College women's basketball team earned its seventh loss of the season by falling to the Carson-Newman Eagles on the road Saturday night, 68-64.
Laura Marquardt (Mt. Pleasant, S.C.) led her team in scoring Saturday night with 16 points. She also earned seven rebounds and three steals. Sade Coates (Meridian, Miss.) led the scarlet and gray in rebounds with 10 boards. She also scored nine points on 4-for-8 shooting.
Ashley Tipton (Knoxville, Tenn.) led her Eagles to victory with a game high 18 points. She was perfect from the free throw line and shot 4-for-7 from the field. The leading rebounder for Carson-Newman was Zoriah Williams (Calera, Ala.) with six boards.
The scarlet and gray got off to a rough start as the Eagles created a 3-10 lead within the first five minutes. Newberry came back strong and a four-point play from Keisha Henderson (Columbia, S.C.) gave the away team a 14-12 lead. NC built the lead up to four points until the team gave up a 14-4 run which put Carson-Newman up, 36-30. The Eagles would lead at the halfway mark, 40-34.
The Eagles put on a shooting clinic in the first half, going 14-for-28 from field goal range and a perfect 5-for-5 from three point range. Newberry looked out of sorts from long range, shooting 3-for-11 in the opening stanza. Despite that, they kept the deficit from growing too large by pulling down eight offensive rebounds.
With Anita Bulcher (Russia, Ohio) in foul trouble, the scarlet and gray relied on Coates to dominate the post and she did. Coates led her team in both points (9) and rebounds (6) by the halfway point. The leading scorer at the half for the Eagles was Tipton with 12 points. She shot 100% from both field goal range and the free throw line.
Carson-Newman immediately built a double-digit lead at the start of the second half, but Newberry came charging back to tie the game up at 45 all. From then on it was a back and forth battle until the final two and a half minutes. During that time, both teams only managed to earn one field goal. Unfortunately for Newberry fans, the Eagles won the game at the foul line with six made free throws in the final two minutes.
Although Newberry won the rebounding and turnover battle, they lost the battle at the free throw line. The Eagles only shot 60% at the charity strip but they took 20 more free throw attempts and made 14. Newberry on the other hand, went a mere 3-for-3 from the foul line.
Despite her foul trouble, Bulcher was stellar in the second half, scoring all 15 of her points on 7-for-8 shooting. Mandy Mendenhall (Kingston Springs, Tenn.) was the leading scorer for the home team in the final half with nine points on 3-for-3 shooting from the field and from the foul line.
It was a poor shooting night for the scarlet and gray who only made 6-of-28 from three-point range. They shot 37.5% from the field overall, but only 24% from the team's top three scorers.
The loss puts the Newberry College women's basketball team at 13-7 overall and 6-3 in the SAC. They will return home this Wednesday to play Mars Hill at 6 p.m. The game will be a part of Newberry College's “Blackout Night.” Students are encouraged to bring canned food items in to exchange for official 2009 Newberry Blackout T-Shirts.
