CLEVELAND (courtesy of @KWCPanthers) -
Playing in Quicken Loans Arena, the home of the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Kentucky Wesleyan women's basketball team pulled off an 81-57 win over G-MAC opponent Ursuline College on Wednesday afternoon. The Panthers are 12-5 on the season and 7-1 in conference play with the win over the Arrows.
Ursuline opened the game hitting a jumper to go ahead 2-0. KWC senior Shelbi Tyra made a free throw attempt and senior Karly Rhoads hit a layup to give the Panthers the 3-2 advantage. Rhoads layup put her past the 1,000 point mark in her career at KWC.
Karly's twin sister, Kourtney Rhoads put the Panthers up 15-5 at the 12:51 mark and T'Essence Phelps scored on KWC's ensuing possession to cap the Panthers 12-0 run.
UC's Emma Ricketts connected on a three pointer for Ursuline to put the score at 27-21 and the Arrows within six of the Panthers with 5:22 remaining before the break.
Karly Rhoads put the Panthers back up by 10 at the 3:32 mark following two made free throws to put the score at 31-21 and went into halftime with its largest lead of the half following a jumper and a free throw by Jennifer Walker-Crawford who put the score at 39-21.
The Panthers opened the second half of play scoring the first six points to build a 26 point advantage at the 17:19 mark following a layup by Walker-Crawford who made it a 47-21 game. Ursuline ended the KWC run by converting on two free throw attempts.
The Arrows made two additional free throw attempts at the 7:49 mark to pull within 19 of the Panthers, making it a 66-47 game.
Jordan Scott gave the Panthers their largest lead of the game with 1:20 on the clock by hitting two free throws to put the score at 81-53.
KWC finished the game shooting 46 percent from the floor, 33 percent from three point range and 73 percent from the free throw line. Ursuline made 27 percent of its shots from the field, 13 percent from beyond the arch and 61 percent from the stripe.
Gambill lead the team in scoring with 17 points and Phelps had a team high eight rebounds.
Karly Rhoads ended the game with a team high two steals and finished with eight points to put her 16th on the 1,000 point list with 1,007 points. She is the 17th Panther to reach the 1,000 point mark.
KWC returns to the road in its next game against Salem International on Thursday, January 30 at 5:00 pm CST in Salem, W.Va.