ABILENE – Abilene Christian used a strong fourth quarter to pick up a 65-57 win over Angelo State in front of nearly a thousand exciting area elementary school students on Thursday.
The Elementary School Field Trip promotion drew 997 area schoolchildren among the 1,230 fans for the Thursday matinee. The decibel level reached 111 and averaged 91 for the game.
"I really look forward to this elementary school game every year and you try to prepare your players for what it will be like but it's pretty shocking you know when you're trying to play basketball game trying to coach and just everybody screaming the whole game," said ACU Head Coach
Julie Goodenough. "It's really fun. We see this as a community service opportunity to get however many kids on our campus and watch a Division I women's basketball game in person. It is a pretty cool field trip and we really appreciate all the folks that came out. I know there's a lot of coordination that goes on with campus principals, coordinating buses, getting the teachers on board, all of that and we really appreciate everybody they came out today."
The game itself took a while for ACU to untangle. The Rambelles came out swatting shots and deflecting passes in the early going.
"I think we're a little bit surprised with their length," Goodenough said. "They were a long team compared to us. We don't play against that a whole lot in practice so we had to make some adjustments. Credit Angelo State; they played tough today. I thought they started the game out more physically than we did and we had to ramp it up a little bit."
After eight lead changes and six ties,
Payton Hull gave the Wildcats a 47-44 lead with two free throws with three seconds left in the third quarter.
Aspen Thornton scored five points in a 7-2 run by the Cats that saw the hosts post a 56-46 lead with 5:36 left.
"The one thing that sticks out of my mind (about getting separation) is how aggressive
Aspen Thornton was in the fourth quarter and how she got herself into the paint," Goodenough said.
Claire Graham had a three-pointer at the 3:27 mark to push ACU to its biggest lead at 62-48.
Graham had her cheering section with students from the Jim Ned district (Lawn) cheering and waving signs for their hometown hero.
"It's awesome," Graham said. "It's hard to describe but just to be from somewhere that they still support you just means a lot."
ACU did a great job of rebounding the basketball, hauling down 52 rebounds to ASU's 36 for the game.
Addison Martin led that effort with nine, followed by
Bella Earle with eight while Thornton and
Emma Troxell had six each.
Thornton led the offense with 18 points, including three three-pointers. Earle added 12 and Hull scored 11. Thornton also added a team-best four steals.
"We knew that it wasn't going to be easy and it was a close game up until the end," Thornton said. "In the first half, I think they really hit us in the mouth so going out in the second half I knew that I had to keep being aggressive even though my shots weren't falling."
Briley Merket came off of the bench to lead ASU with 13 points.
ACU returns to action next weekend (Nov. 25-26) in Annapolis when they play Towson at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday and Navy at noon on Sunday (Central time) in the Navy Classic.
