The Lady Bisons continued their conference winning streak on Saturday with a win over Southern Nazarene University (SNU).
In their ninth conference game, the women’s basketball team came out with a 69-53 win, pushing their record to an impressive 9-0 in the Great American Conference (GAC).
With their tallest player standing 6 feet 4 inches, SNU managed to out-rebound the Lady Bisons in the first half. Clinging to a one-point lead at the half, assistant coach David Walker said that the coaches pressed the girls to hit the boards harder.
“At halftime we challenged the girls to get that fixed and they came out in the second half and really pulled away with effort and intensity,” Walker said.
The Lady Bisons did exactly, that and managed to extend their lead and secure the win.
The Lady Bisons knew going into the game that they would have to play smart against a physically imposing SNU team. Walker said that the main area of concern was keeping the ball out of the hands of the Crimson Storm’s best player, senior Aminata Fall. Fall, despite scoring 20 points and grabbing 12 rebounds, was largely contained by the Harding defense.
Senior Arielle Saunders was Harding’s lead scorer and rebounder with a total of 16 points and 10 rebounds. The second leading scorers, sophomore A’ndrea Haney and freshman Sydney Layrock, both played an equally impressive game with 15 points each.
As one of four freshman on the team, Layrock said she has started to warm up to the college level, and it showed Saturday, as she played one of her best games of the year for the Lady Bisons.
The game against SNU drew quite the crowd to the Rhodes Field House Saturday afternoon. Sophomore Molly Maturi was one of those in attendance cheering on both of Harding’s basketball teams.
“The atmosphere was crazy,” Maturi said. “It was cool to see how much the teams feed off of the energy in the crowd.”
The Lady Bisons will need that energy Saturday, as they face off in the Rhodes Field House against Arkansas-Monticello. Results from the Arkansas Tech game on Thursday, Jan. 22 not available as of press time.
