ABILENE – The top defensive team in the Southland Conference put the clamps on the league's top offensive unit Sunday afternoon as Central Arkansas walked out of Moody Coliseum with a 66-60 win over ACU in the women's conference opener for both teams.
The win pushes the Sugar Bears to 8-5 overall and 1-0 in the Southland, while the Wildcats fall to 7-4 and 0-1 with their second straight loss. The Wildcats will be back in action Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. in Natchitoches, La., when they take on defending conference tournament champion Northwestern State in another Southland Conference contest.
UCA entered the game allowing just 54.3 points per game, while ACU was averaging 77.4 points per game on the offensive end. But the Wildcats – third in the league in field goal percentage at 43.2 percent – hit just 23 of 58 shots (39.7 percent) and were never able to find any consistent offense.
"We just had a hard time finding the bucket," ACU head coach
Julie Goodenough said. "I don't think it was anything that they (UCA) necessarily took us out of offensively; we just didn't hit open shots. What really hurt is that we didn't do a good job at the free throw line (7 of 13). If we had hit our free throws, the game would have come down to the last possession."
Instead the Sugar Bears used an 8-0 run about midway through the second half to turn a one-point lead into a nine-point lead that eventually stretched out to as many as 14 points on a free throw by Brianna Mullins to make it a 57-43 game with 6:12 to play. Maggie Proffitt – who led all scorers with 22 points – had 13 of the Sugar Bears' 19 points in the game-turning 19-6 run.
The Wildcats did manage to cut the lead Sugar Bears' lead to four points (64-60) on a 3-pointer by
Alexis Mason with 18 seconds to play, but that was as close as they would get.
ACU sophomore center
Sydney Shelstead recorded her fourth double-double of the season with 15 points and a game-high 11 rebounds to go along with two assists and two steals in 30 minutes.
Lizzy Dimba had 19 points and eight rebounds.
