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Tiger women roll by Newman
12/3/2009
By RANDY GONZALES
rgonzales@dailynews.net
If you arrived late for Wednesday night's game, you probably would have thought it was another blowout victory for the Fort Hays State University women's basketball team.
In the end, it was -- but not without a struggle at the start of the game.
Fort Hays was an 88-57 winner over Newman University in Gross Memorial Coliseum to improve to 6-0 on the season. But the Tigers didn't take the lead for good until 10:13 was left in the first half on a 3-pointer by senior guard Audra Binford to give Fort Hays a 15-14 lead.
Fort Hays pulled away to take a 43-27 halftime lead.
Tiger coach Tony Hobson said a slow start is nothing new for his squad.
"We've had one game this year out of six where we got off to a good start," Hobson said. "We have a tendency to be tentative, not very aggressive offensively."
Senior guard Kayla Klug scored 13 of her game-high 15 points in the first half for the Tigers, giving the team a boost when it was needed.
"That funk has kind of been around the last couple games," Klug said.
Klug punctuated her hot first half by hitting a 3-pointer with 4 seconds left that hit the rim, bounced high into the air, hit the rim again and finally fell through.
Binford added 10 of her 13 points and senior guard Naomi Bancroft scored all 10 of her points in the first 20 minutes.
Hobson said the Tigers aren't getting the type of shots they need at the start of a game.
"All of our early shots are perimeter ones. If they don't go down, we struggle to get off" to a good start, Hobson said.
"We are going to have to get a better jump on people than we have been."
To fix the problem, Hobson said he might need to look at who is getting the early minutes.
"I've been concerned about it from Day One," Hobson said. "I think maybe we don't have the right people in there from the beginning."
Once Fort Hays got going, it was more of the same in the second half, as the Tigers outscored the Jets 45-30 after intermission.
Senior forward Erica Biel scored 13 points and freshman forward Traci Keyser added 10 points off the bench for Fort Hays.
Freshman forward Ladessa Nachbor led Newman (1-6) with 11 points off the bench.
Fort Hays enters Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association play on Saturday with a 4 p.m. game at University of Nebraska-Omaha.
| Scoreboard | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Sport | Date | Opponent | Score |
| MB | 03/13 | Central Oklahoma | W 80-64 |
| SB | 03/08 | Fort Lewis | W 5-4 |
| BB | 03/07 | No. 9 Emporia State | L 13-7 |
| BB | 03/06 | No. 9 Emporia State | L 16-4 |
| BB | 03/06 | No. 9 Emporia State | W 3-0 |
| MB | 03/05 | Emporia State | L 65-61 |
| BB | 03/05 | No. 9 Emporia State | L 10-3 |
| WB | 03/04 | No. 15 Emporia | L 72-66 |
| WB | 02/28 | No. 12 Emporia State | L 87-80 |
| MB | 02/28 | Emporia State | W 94-47 |
| SB | 02/28 | Quincy | L 6-0 |
| SB | 02/27 | Mo Southern | W 9-3 |
| SB | 02/27 | Missouri S&T | L 8-3 |
| SB | 02/27 | Drury | W 17-10 |
| BB | 02/27 | Mo. Western | W 17-0 |
| BB | 02/27 | Mo. Western | W 3-2 (10 inn.) |
| BB | 02/26 | Mo. Western | W 12-8 |
| BB | 02/26 | Missouri Western | W 11-10 |
| MB | 02/24 | Pittsburg State | W 69-60 |
| WB | 02/24 | Pittsburg State | L 78-74 |