Box Score
ABILENE – Staring at an 11-point deficit and a team that appeared to be shaking off the effects of a sleepy snow day on the ACU campus, Wildcat head coach
Julie Goodenough had seen enough.
She called her third timeout of the first 10 minutes and, for the third time, let her team know that she wasn't very pleased with the effort they were putting forth.
Whatever she said must have worked because the game turned in the Wildcats' favor as they rallied from that 30-19 deficit to completely outplay the Huskies en route to an 82-70 win in Southland Conference action at Moody Coliseum.
The win snaps a two-game losing streak for the Wildcats, who had lost four of their previous five games entering Thursday night's contest. ACU is now 13-10 overall and 4-4 in the Southland, while the Huskies – winners of three of their last four games before Thursday – fall to 9-13 and 5-6. ACU is back in action Saturday at 1 p.m. when it takes on Texas A&M-Corpus Christi at Moody Coliseum.
Houston Baptist – the best shooting team in the league entering the contest – looked like it in the first 10 minutes as it continually got wide-open looks or layups off fast breaks as the Wildcats failed to play very good transition defense. But that all changed after Shanice Steenholdt hit a layup to put the Huskies up 30-19 with 10:10 to play in the half. The layup was the ninth of the first 10 minutes of the game for Houston Baptist.
"Our defense just wasn't very good early," Goodenough said. "I don't know if we were just out of it because school was closed today and they slept late or what, but it wasn't good."
Challenged by their head coach, the Wildcats responded with some of their best basketball in the last couple of weeks as they outscored the Huskies 63-40 over the final 28:06 of the contest to pull away for the victory.
HBU led 39-34 at halftime, but it took the Wildcats less than four minutes to take its first lead of the night as they opened the second half on a 13-6 run in the first 3:15 of the second half. Four early points from
Lizzy Dimba and then three straight 3-pointers by the Wildcats – the first by
Whitney West and the final two by freshman guard
Alexis Mason – gave the Wildcats a 47-45 lead with 16:45 to play in the game.
The Huskies would regain a momentary lead, but
Lizzy Dimba hit a jumper on an assist by
Cemetra Jenkins to give the Wildcats a 50-49 lead with 12:31 to play and they wouldn't trail the rest of the night. After Tayler Jefferson hit a 3-pointer with 10:03 to play to cut ACU's lead to 57-56, the Wildcats ripped off an 11-0 run in less than three minutes to put the game away.
Suzzy Dimba got it started with a 3-pointer and then hit a free throw to make it a 61-56 game.
Lizzy Dimba hit two more free throws before
Renata Marquez hit a 3-pointer to give ACU a 10-point lead (66-56) with 8:06 left in the game. Mason then hit two free throws with 7:17 to play to push the lead to 12 points (68-56).
HBU shot 64.6 percent from the field (31 of 48), but made just two 3-pointers and turned the ball over 30 times, the second-most turnovers by an ACU opponent this season behind the 32 by Angelo State in the season's third game on Nov. 14. Shanice Steenholdt led the Huskies with 22 points and five rebounds, while Jefferson and Rachel Arthur had 13 points apiece.
Mason led four Wildcats in double figures with 23 points, while senior forward
Renata Marquez had 19 points,
Suzzy Dimba 15 and
Lizzy Dimba 13.
Suzzy Dimba led the Wildcats with seven rebounds, while Marquez was held without a rebound for only the second time in her career, snapping a streak of 75 straight games with at least one rebound. The only other game she's played in which she failed to grab a rebound with late in her freshman season, Feb. 23, 2011, at Tarleton State.
