JMU's Sweep at the Ted, Dawn on Fire

On January 7th, the JMU Men's Basketball team won their first ever game at ODU's Ted Constant Center (which opened in 2002). Sunday, January 25th, would see the JMU Women's team do the same. According to Dawn Evans, they had a chip on their shoulder after a blowout loss at the Ted last year, which was JMU's worst loss of the season. After getting off to a rough start going down 3-14, all they needed was a little jump start by Brittany Crowell (told you I liked her). She nailed a 3, getting the Lady Dukes on a 18-3 run, putting them on top 21-17. Then, just when ODU came back to tie it up at 23, Brittany nails another one from behind the arc. On the ensuing possession, Nina Uqdah stole the ball and got it back to Brittany, who nailed her second 3-pointer in a row. This marked the third game in a row where Brittany has hit three 3-pointers...not too bad for a freshman. The rest of the game was a mess of fouls and free throws, which combined with the tv timeouts to make a very lengthy game, which showed in the players faces towards of the end of the game. One-by-one, our players started fouling out. We ended up having Lauren Jimenez, Jalissa Taylor, and Courtney Hamner foul out and Nina finished the game with 4 fouls.

JMU had the lead from midway through the first half, but had to hold onto it at ODU's home turf, with some of our key scorers fouling out as time was winding down. Luckily, one of our Lady Dukes just happens to be the nation's leading scorer. She also happens to love taking over the game in these situations. Dawn Evans ended up scoring 30 points or more for the sixth time in her career and the fifth time this year, which are both JMU records (both previously held by T Young, now a star on the Atlanta Dream). Dawn went 50% from the field and 11-13 from the FT line, netting her 36 points. This performence led to her fourth CAA Player of the Week honor of the season. She also increased her average PPG, taking it up to 24.8, remaining #1 in the NCAA by 0.9. Strong performances by Nina (8 pts, 8 reb, 2 a, 2 s) and an injured Kisha (4 pts, 7 reb, 4 a) along with the rest of the team playing good defense helped lift up this team to show that they can compete and beat the best in the conference. Currently, tied for first, the Dukes will try to hold their position at Towson on Thursday night.

DNR || The Breeze || JMUSports || Box Score