Women's Basketball: St. John's Loss Costly
January 29, 2006 02:17 PM | General
January 29, 2006
NEW YORK – Kia Wright scored 19 points and Angela Clark added 17 to lead St. John’s to a 74-69 victory over West Virginia Sunday afternoon at Madison Square Garden.
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| West Virginia's Meg Bulger, left, steals the ball from St. John's Tiina Sten, right, of Turku, Finland, in the first-half of their Big East Conference game in New York, Sunday, Jan. 29, 2006.
AP photo/Henny Ray Abrams |
The Red Storm improved to 17-3, 7-2, and snapped West Virginia’s six-game winning streak against them. The loss may have been very costly for the Mountaineers, whose leading scorer Meg Bulger went down with a knee injury trying to make a move to the basket with 4:54 remaining in the game. Bulger had to be helped off the court and could not put any pressure on her left knee.
At the time of Bulger’s injury, the Mountaineers were trailing by only six, 64-58, and got six straight points from Bulger’s replacement LaQuita Owens to tie the game at 64. But St. John’s retook the lead on a pair of Clark free throws. Greeba Barlow and Britney Davis-White traded 3-point baskets before Tara Walker nailed a tough jumper with the shot clock winding down to give the Red Storm a 71-67 advantage.
West Virginia had one final opportunity to reduce the Red Storm lead when Kia Wright missed the front end of a 1 and 1, but the Mountaineers couldn’t cash in on the other end. Wright sealed the victory with a pair of free throws.
Davis-White led the Mountaineers with 18 points, followed by 14 from Bulger and 12 from Chakhia Cole.
At the end of the game West Virginia had its top three players – Bulger, Cole and Olayinka Sanni – watching from the bench either from fouling out or because of injury.
There were 10 ties in the game.
After shooting 53.8 percent in the first half (14 of 26), the Mountaineers cooled off considerably in the second half hitting just 13 of 35 for 37.1 percent and finishing the game 26 of 61 for 44.3 percent.
The Mountaineers had a season-high 27 turnovers including 18 in the first half.
The loss drops West Virginia’s record to 11-7, 3-4, with an extremely difficult stretch of games coming up against nationally ranked DePaul on Tuesday night and at Connecticut on Saturday.
