SAU women’s basketball picks up home win over Brenau

LAURINBURG —The St. Andrews Knights women’s basketball team defeated conference rival Brenau University by a score of 46-42 on Saturday at Harris Court. St. Andrews improves to 4-7 (2-4 against conference opponents) on the season with the victory while the Tigers fall to 2-9 (1-6 against AAC teams) with the loss. Head Coach Denise Hannah believes there’s some parts of her team that are coming together as they reach the middle part of the season but also wasn’t satisfied with everything she saw in the narrow win.

“We are building some momentum and piecing things together at certain aspects of the game,” Hannah said. “There’s still a lot of things we have to improve on, hopefully we can get the momentum going into the second half of the season which is mostly all conference play.”

After a technical foul to start the game gave Brenau a 1-0 edge before any time ran off the clock, the Knights scored eight unanswered points over the first two minutes and 48 seconds. They would control the first quarter for the most part, leading by as many as 10 (16-6 with 55 seconds left in the quarter), though the Tigers scored five unanswered points to close out the period and narrow the gap to 16-11 after 10 minutes.

St. Andrews then comfortably won the second quarter thanks largely to their defense as the Tigers scored just four points in the period. The Knights scored first on a layup by Angelina Jordan and were up 18-12 after a free throw from Brenau’s Kayla Stafford. St. Andrews then went on a 7-0 run over the next four minutes of game time and led 25-12 with 4:50 left in the half. The Tigers didn’t score any points after the free throw until 1:45 was left in the half with Anna Gliatta making a pair of free throws. A late layup by Katie Moore gave the Knights a 27-15 halftime lead. Hannah knew coming into the game that Brenau was susceptible to pressure and wanted St. Andrews to apply it often on the defensive end of the floor.

“We were just playing to our team identity, watching them on film we knew they didn’t do well with pressure,” Hannah said. “That was our game plan coming into it, we shut down the post and it was hard for them to score when we forced turnovers.”

The third quarter had more scoring in it with Brenau scoring 17 points to St. Andrews’ 14. The Tigers did make a charge late in the quarter as they scored six unanswered points after trailing 38-26 (3:25 left in quarter) to shrink the gap to six (38-32 with 1:14 left in the period). A three-point field goal from Jordan with 25 seconds remaining ensured the Knights went into the fourth up by nine at 41-32.

St. Andrews started the final frame strong, scoring the first five points in 1:38 of game time thanks to a made jump shot from Jordan and a three-pointer from Jamicia Davis. After a made free throw from Stafford at the 7:19 mark, there was no scoring from either team until she made two more free throws with three minutes left in the game to make it 46-35. The Knights struggled to put the game away as the Tigers managed to trim the margin all the way down to four with 42 seconds remaining, though the Knights made one last defensive stop on the final series of the game to preserve the victory. Hannah saw some small things go wrong in a big way down the stretch and knows that will be a focus in order to close out games more efficiently.

“We have to tweak some things on offense and communicate better on defense,” Hannah said. “We have to eliminate some of those mental lapses we had late in the game and keep putting our foot on the pedal. We missed way too many layups so those are some little things we have to clean up.”

Katie Moore led the Knights in scoring with 15 points, shared the team lead in rebounds with Londaisha Smith who had 11 and also added two assists, two blocks and a steal. The Knights won many of the key statistics battles including field goal percentage (29.3%-24.4%), three-point percentage (30%-19%), free throw percentage (90%-65.2%), rebounds (47-23), second chance points (18-3), points in the paint (24-14) and bench points (14-0).

St. Andrews will get a handful of days off before remaining at home for a matchup on Friday night against St. Thomas. Tipoff is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. from Harris Court.