against Louisiana College at the Montagne Center, Monday.
UP photo by Abigail Pennington
Senior guard Moe Kinard tied her career-high 31 points in the Lady Cards’ 94-43 win over Louisiana College Wildcats, Monday, in the Montagne Center.
“We had a great week of practice,” head coach Robin Harmony said, but the Lady Cardinals got off to a slow start. “We weren’t expecting that. I think our kids just took them lightly. We didn’t have a good scout on them. They had some guards that were really quick and broke our press easily. So, it riled us up a little bit. We just needed to get back to what we do and that’s full court defense and then worry about what we do for our court-on-court.”
The Lady Cardinals offense was slow in the first 10 minutes of the game with Miya Crump hitting a three-point shot to be the first with points on the board. But, Louisiana College wasn’t far behind as they tied Lamar moments later with a three-point shot of their own. LU’s Jadyn Pimentel responded within seconds with another three-point shot, 6-3. Both teams battled it out for the lead for the remainder of the quarter until LU finally pulled away with consecutive shots by senior guard Chastadie Barrs, another three by Crump and a layup by Kinard to pull the score to 17-7. The Wildcats got a chance to score once more before ending the quarter, 22-9.
LU didn’t hit their stride in the second quarter until the five-minute mark when Kinard scored a layup followed by a three-point shot by Barrs to up the score to 32-11. The LU defense held off the Wildcat advance allowing them to score only two points in the quarter as they went on an unanswered 27-point run to end the half, 51-11.
Louisiana College picked up the pace in the third quarter nearly outscoring Lamar as they matched the Lady Cards point for point but an energized Kinard sank three three pointers, four free throws and three layups to tie her career high and lead the team to 81-32 to end the third.
Lamar slowed their advance in the final quarter only adding 13 points to the score, while Louisiana College only added 11 points to end the game with a LU 94-43 victory.
Kinard led the team in points with Crump not far behind with 19 and Pimentel with 17. Barrs tacked on seven more steals to her all-time record and the defense was led by Kinard with nine rebounds, Crump with seven and Umaja Collins with six.
“We defend our nest,” Harmony said. “We try to hang our hat on defense and we lock down and played pretty good defense. We got easy transition points and did some big time shots from the perimeter.”
The Lady Cardinals hit the road, today, to take on Mississippi State at 7 p.m. in Starkville, Miss., before returning home, Tuesday, to host LeTourneau at 7 p.m. in the Montagne Center.
Story by Cassandra Jenkins, UP editor