CARROLLTON, Ga. – Behind a stellar defensive performance, the UWG women's basketball team pushed through for a fourth straight win on Tuesday, defeating West Alabama 59-45 at The Coliseum.
"I'm so proud of our players for how we played tonight," said head coach
Joanna Reitz. "Our defense was stingy and communicated well. West Alabama sets a lot of screens, and we communicated through them"
West Georgia (8-4, 4-4 GSC) held West Alabama (3-9, 2-6 GSC) to 45 points which is the fewest the Wolves have allowed this season.
"To hold a team in the 40s, any team, is an impressive effort," Reitz added. "Their two leading scorers that we keyed on, number 12 had zero points and number 13 was 1-for-10 and 0-for-7 with just four points."
The defensive effort came on a night when the Wolves didn't have their best shooting night offensively, scoring less than 60 points.
Mykah Anderson led the UWG offense with 14 points to go with six rebounds and three steals.
K'Nari Holliday had 12 points while
Jada Powell had a game-high 12 rebounds.
Both teams got out to a slow start as West Georgia struggled with six first half turnovers
and the Tigers opened the game 3-of-15.
Injuries forced some changes in the lineup, as Reitz had Powell and Holliday on the floor together for significant minutes.
"With Anna (Gernatt) out of the lineup, we had to change the lineup some," Reitz said, "We've been wanting to play Jada and K'Nari at the same time before, but couldn't do it because of foul trouble. With that, we looked a little out of sync offensively at times, but we'll get in sync and figure it out.
The game was tied 9-9 late in the opening quarter until
Zuriyah Davis drained a long range three-pointer at the buzzer to make it a 12-9 lead.
West Georgia outscored the Tigers 13-12 in the second quarter, leading by as much as seven before taking a 25-21 lead into the halftime break.
K'Nari Holliday led the first half efforts with eight points.
Mykah Anderson made a great play to get a steal on the opening inbound pass and turned that into a layup to fuel a 6-0 run to start the third quarter. UWG would lead by as much as 10 in the period but the Tigers stayed in the game and trailed by seven.
The fourth was the most productive quarter for UWG as the Wolves scored 19 points and led by as much as 16 at the 3:33 mark.
Beyond the offensive effort listed above,
Katelyn Dunning had a solid outing at the point guard position, scoring seven points with five rebounds while tying a career-high with six assists.
"KD is playing like a veteran out there," Reitz said of the sophomore's play. "She played a lot of minutes for us as a freshman, and she's just a very mature player with a high IQ and knows what we're trying to do."
Zuriyah Davis saw her streak of 20-point games come to an end as the junior finished with nine.
West Georgia continues the season on Saturday, traveling to Rome to take on Shorter at 2 p.m.
"Shorter starts a string of four games in eight days and three games in five days for us," Reitz concluded. "All of our conference road games are tough. I'm glad we've got a little time here to regroup and prepare and I know our players will be ready to go Saturday.
