Nov. 26, 2010

Final Stats

ORONO, Maine -- A 22-7 run at the start of the second half allowed the Navy women's basketball team to pull away from Maine and eventually post a 65-43 victory over the Black Bears Friday night at Alfond Arena in Orono, Maine. The win advances Navy into a championship game of the Dead River Company Classic. The Mids will face Florida Saturday at 2 p.m. in the title game of the tournament.

A link to live statistics from the game can be found at www.NavySports.com, while the Maine web site, www.GoBlackBears.com, while provide a video stream of the game for $7.99.

Neither team shot the ball well in a first half that ended with Navy (4-1) holding a slim 20-17 lead over Maine (1-3). The Mids made just 21.2 percent of their field goal attempts during the opening 20 minutes of play, while the Black Bears connected on just 17.9 percent of their shots from the field.

Fortunes changed in a hurry for the Navy offense in the early part of the second half. Cassie Consedine (Sr., Bartlesville, Okla.) quickly knocked down a field goal and a pair of three-point field goals to boost the Navy lead to 28-19 just 2:30 into the half. Her trio of baskets ignited a span that saw the Mids open the second half by sinking 8-of-13 shots from the floor. Conversely, Maine missed 15 of its first 17 field goal attempts in the second half, and that resulted in Navy building a 42-24 advantage with 10:40 left in the game. An old-fashioned three-point play by Jade Geif (Fr., Lakeview, Minn.) soon pushed the Navy lead to 21 points (47-26, 7:24 left), and the Mids would lead by at least 20 points over the remainder of the game.

Consedine also had started the first half with a strong showing. She scored eight of Navy's first 10 points of the game on a field goal and a pair of three-point field goals.

"We made a small change coming into the game in how we break a 1-2-2 zone," said Navy head coach Stefanie Pemper. "Cassie hit a few three-pointers right away. I think that impacted both us and Maine."

Navy would shoot 60.7 percent from the field in the second half, which included a 7-of-13 effort (53.8%) from outside of the three-point line after halftime, and connected on 39.3 percent of its field goal attempts for the full 40 minutes of play. In turn, Maine would shoot just 27 percent from the floor after halftime and ended the contest shooting just 23.1 percent from the field in the game. Maine's overall shooting percentage is the lowest for a Stefanie Pemper-coached Navy team and is tied for the ninth-lowest mark allowed by the Mids in school history.

"It is a cliche to talk about a team that cares more about what they are doing and winning than the other," said Pemper. "That's not to discredit Maine because we know they wanted to win. But at halftime we felt we were not playing with the energy that we needed to.

"We came all of the way up here and had to decide that we would represent ourselves better than we were. I didn't know if that would result in us winning the game or not."

In addition to its shooting effort, Navy also held a 52-40 advantage over Maine on the glass. That helped offset the fact that the Black Bears forced the Mids into 26 turnovers while committing 19 turnovers of their own. Additionally, Maine was 11-of-18 from the foul line while the Mids, who were 11-of-27 in three-point field goal attempts, were only 6-of-7 from the charity stripe.

Consedine drilled four three-point field goals in the game on her way to tallying a game-high 16 points. Meanwhile, Geif notched the first double-double of her five-game career with 13 points and 11 rebounds. Angela Myers (Sr., San Antonio, Texas), who had led Navy in scoring in each of the team's opening four games of the year, tallied five points, seven assists, three rebounds and a pair of steals in the game.

"That is the toughest first half I can remember Angela having in my three years with her," said Pemper, of Myers' opening 20 minutes of play that saw her miss 6-of-7 field goal attempts and turn the ball over four times. "We may have come to rely on her too much, and in the first half you saw what happens to us when she is not part of the game. But we challenged some other people today. Chey Arvin (So., Noblesville, Ind.) hit some shots for us, definitely the play of Jade and Cassie, and Megan Matheny (So., Lexington Park, Md.) made some plays that sparked us, then things started to snowball from there. It is amazing what happens when you start to hit some shots."

Amber Smith scored 12 points to lead Maine, while her teammate Samantha Wheeler scored 11 points and grabbed seven rebounds in a losing effort. The Black Bears will play South Alabama in the consolation game of the tournament.