CONWAY, Ark. — Central Arkansas dominated one of the league's best rebounding teams Saturday afternoon, and it led the Sugar Bears to a 63-45 win over ACU at the Farris Center in Southland Conference women's basketball action.
The loss is the second straight road loss for the Wildcats, who fell 66-55 Wednesday at Stephen F. Austin. ACU is now 12-6 overall and 6-2 in league play, while the Sugar Bears improve to 14-5 and 7-1. ACU will be back at home Wednesday to take on Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, while the Sugar Bears will be in Nacogdoches to take on first-place Stephen F. Austin.
The Wildcats had a huge challenge in the UCA duo of Kierra Jordan Taylor Baudoin, and they had no answer for either one of them. The pair dominated the game as Jordan finished with 23 points and 16 rebounds, while Baudoin had 24 points and six rebounds. Those two outscored the Wildcats by themselves and combined to grab as many rebounds as did the Wildcats as a team.
UCA had 16 offensive rebounds with Jordan grabbing six of them and Baudoin getting two as the Sugar Bears out-rebounded ACU 36-22 in the game.
"Jordan and Baudoin are two of the best players in the league, and they played like it (Saturday)," ACU head coach
Julie Goodenough said. "They were stronger than we were and just manhandled us in the post. They got after us rebounding the ball, especially on the offensive end. We've got a lot of growing up to do. We're an inexperienced team, and it showed today."
UCA — which leads the league in scoring defense, allowing just 48.2 points per game — extended its defense to the 3-point line to guard against the Wildcats' most potent weapon. ACU entered the game leading the league in 3-point field goals made (163) and attempted (474) and second in percentage (34.4), but never got untracked from the line. ACU, in fact, hit just 3 of 13 from 3-point range, its fewest made 3-pointers in a game this season.
"Their game plan today was very much like last year's when we played here," Goodenough said. "They were very aggressive in guarding the 3-point line, but when you do that you give up drives to the basket and either layups or free throws. We've got be able to make those and we didn't (Saturday)."
ACU trailed 30-24 at halftime, but the Sugar Bears took control of the game in the second half. After hitting 7 of 12 field goals in the first quarter, ACU was just 10 of 30 from the field the rest of the game, including 2 of 9 from 3-point range.
Brian Wright (12 points) and
Dominique Golightly (10 points) were the only Wildcats to finish in double figures in scoring, although freshman guard
Kayla Galindo had eight points, two rebounds, on assist, one block and three steals in 26 minutes off the bench.
