Women's Basketball: WVU Drops Third Straight
January 06, 2005 09:14 PM | General
January 6, 2005
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SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. – Monique Blake scored 21 points and grabbed nine rebounds to lead Seton Hall to a 66-55 victory over West Virginia Thursday night at Walsh Gymnasium.
Seton Hall clamped down on a struggling West Virginia offense and limited the Mountaineers to just 21 of 55 from the field while forcing the Mountaineers to commit 16 turnovers. Seton Hall has now held its opponents to less than 60 points in a game 10 times this season in improving to 9-4, 1-1.
West Virginia (9-3, 0-2) jumped out to a quick 6-0 before the Pirates scored eight straight points to retake the lead. Another 8-3 Pirate run pushed their margin to seven, 16-9, before West Virginia closed the gap after a Sherell Sowho three.
A Meg Bulger three tied the score at 19 before Seton Hall ran off 12 straight points to take a 31-19 advantage. Blake keyed the run with a layup and a pair of free throws.
Bulger answered with a 17 footer and a three-point basket, and Olayinka Sanni got through a triple team to score a basket off the glass to pull West Virginia to within five at the break.
But West Virginia endured a miserable second half offensively, failing to score for nine minutes until Sanni broke the dry spell with a pair of free throws. West Virginia didn’t make its first field goal of the second half until Kate Glusko hit a three at the nine minute mark. In the meantime, Bulger was on the bench after being whistled for her fourth foul at 14:39.
Seton Hall built its lead to 19 before Glusko’s three and then to 22 after a pair of Cortne Ellis free throws.
West Virginia was able to make a late run behind eight second-half points by Bulger to cut the final margin to 11.
Bulger finished the game with 16 for the Mountaineers, but managed to hit just six of 18 field goal attempts. Bulger is in the midst of a tough shooting stretch making 20 of her last 53 field goal attempts in losses to Texas A&M Corpus Christi, Boston College and Seton Hall.
Yolanda Paige was the only other West Virginia player to reach double figures with 10. The senior did manage to set the WVU career assist record with six assists, breaking Rosemary Kosiorek’s 13-year school record of 716. Paige now shows 722 career assists.
WVU’s second leading scorer Sherell Sowho managed to score only six on two of eight shooting. That’s nine below her season average.
In addition to shooting just 38 percent from the floor, the Mountaineers were out-rebounded 37-28 by the Pirates.
Ashley Bush scored 14 points and grabbed 10 rebounds and Ellis added 11 for the Pirates.
West Virginia has now lost three in a row after starting the season 9-0 and has lost seven straight to Seton Hall.
The Mountaineers will travel on to Providence to face the 1-12 Lady Friars Saturday afternoon at 2 pm.
