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Feb. 11, 2008 PRINCESS ANNE, Md. - The University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES) sports three players at 6-3 on their roster, but that didn't seem to matter as Hampton used their muscle to out rebound and out play the Lady Hawks in the post and come away with a 68-64 win, snapping the Hawks seven game win streak. Hampton dominated the glass, collecting 50 rebounds, 18 on the offensive end, and blocked four shots. They stood tall against the bigger team and really out fought the Hawks. They outscored UMES in the paint (22-16) and got 16 points off of second chance points while UMES got just four and only 12 offensive boards. The Lady Hawks seemed unable to find an answer for the balanced attack of the Lady Pirates as they got 15 points from Rachel Butler, 14 from Quanneisha Perry and 11 from Chinyere Ukoh. Four other players had five or more points while five players also had six or more rebounds. Butler led the game with nine caroms. "We weren't really ready to play tonight, I didn't see it," UMES coach Fred Batchelor said. "I didn't see the attitude, the mentality that I thought we needed to have going into this game. I thought that they felt if they played good enough they'd win and they weren't really prepared to do what it took to win." Three Hawks scored in double figures with Tiffany Reid again leading UMES in scoring; she had 17. April McBride had 16 points while Casey Morton pitched in 15 points. Morton and McBride tied for a team high in rebounds with seven. Neither team shot the ball particularly well as they combined to take 123 shots. Hampton shot 39.3 percent for the game while UMES was just a little worse at 37.1 percent. Hampton jumped out on the Hawks early, going up by as many as nine but UMES came roaring back at the end of the half, going on a 17-7 run to take a lead at the 2:24 mark. That came on a Queenique Tyler three-pointer, making the score 29-28. Hampton got the lead right back on a Perry lay-in but Brittany Adkins would get a runner and Reid a trey to push it to 34-30 with just over a minute left in the half. Ashlee Finley made one of two free-throws for Hampton and the half-time margin saw UMES up 34-31.
In the second half the Lady Hawks extended their lead to as many as ten. That came a little under six minutes in when Morton got a runner to make it 48-38. From there Hampton came battling back cutting the lead to two with just over nine minutes to play. A minute and a half later the game was tied when Ukoh got a lay-in to make it 55 all. That was the last UMES lead. Laura Lewis put them ahead 57-55 just 23 second later on a lay-up and Hampton would go on to extend their lead in the final minutes of the game. The Hawks made one last heroic effort in the closing seconds, making it 67-64 with just ticks on the clock when Reid sank a three-pointer. They were forced to foul on the inbound however and Artavia Burns made one of two free throws to put it out of reach with less than four seconds to play. With the loss, UMES maintains second place in the MEAC, having a tie-breaker over Coppin State. UMES will try to regroup and head down to face the league's number one team, North Carolina A&T on Saturday, February 16. That game sets up a battle of the number one and two teams in the MEAC. The Lady Aggies got the better of the Hawks in a close contest earlier this season in Princess Anne. Game time is scheduled for 2:00 p.m. |
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