Feb. 27, 2008

Game Notes

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. - The Thundering Herd women's basketball team will wrap up its regular season with a pair of Conference USA road games this weekend.

Marshall will tangle with Rice on Thursday at 8 p.m. before squaring off against Houston at 2 p.m. on Saturday.

The Herd, who travels to Houston with a record of 14-14 and 6-8 in conference play, wrapped up its home schedule with a pair of games over the weekend. On Thursday evening, the Herd overcame a 13-points halftime deficit to sweep the season series against Memphis with an 83-73 win.

That game saw four Marshall players finish with 14 points or more, led by 23 from Kizzy Hart. Freshman Tynikki Crook set a career mark with 16 points while grabbing a game-high nine rebounds while Chantelle Handy continued her success against the Tigers, scoring 14 points and grabbing eight boards.

Casey Baker came within two rebounds of notching the first triple-double in program history. Baker tallied a career-high 11 rebounds while scoring 15 points and notching eight rebounds.

Down by 13 at the half, Marshall clawed its way back, thanks to a 19-0 run to open up the second half. Of Hart's 23 points, 16 came in the latter half.

Marshall was hoping that the momentum generated by its second half against Memphis would carry into Saturday's match-up against UAB, but the Blazers had other ideas. Missing top player Diamond Rogers, the Blazers put forth a defensive effort that would hold the Marshall offense to season lows in points, shooting percentage and field goals.

Alyssa Hammond was the only player on the team to finish in double digits against he Blazers, scoring 12, ten of which coming from the free throw line.

On Thursday, the Herd will start the weekend off with a contest against Rice, who is currently 11-17 and 4-10 in C-USA. The Owls are 3-2 in their last five games and topped Tulsa by a score of 57-49 last time out.

The Owls are led by senior Valeriya Berezhynska, who has averaged 16.7 points in 19 games this season. She put forth two strong efforts last week, scoring 26 points and grabbing 15 boards against SMU and backing that up with 15 points and boards in the win over Tulsa.

Marshall will wrap up the regular season on Saturday against Houston, who has an overall record of 14-14 and 8-6 in the league. The Cougars are currently mired in a five-game losing streak. In their last action, Houston fell to SMU by a score of 85-74.

Twiggy McIntyre is the Cougar's leading scorer, averaging 15.3 PPG. Her strongest play has come beyond-the-arc and at the free throw line. McIntyre ranked third in C-USA and 21st in the nation in free throw percentage, hitting 85.8% of her shots from the charity stripe while her averaging of 2.32 treys per game is No. 1 in the league.

All games can be heard live on Marshall's student station, WMUL 88.1-FM, which will also utilize a web broadcast at www.marshall.edu/wmul.

Following this weekend's pair of games, the Herd women will travel to Orlando for the Conference USA Tournament. First round games are scheduled to begin on March 6th at the UCF Arena. Match-ups for the opening round will be announced following this weekend's action.