Hornets bolster ODAC hopes with win over WildCats

With the end of the regular season quickly approaching, the Lynchburg College women’s basketball team scored a critical victory toward its goal of earning a spot in the conference tournament with a 57-37 win over visiting Randolph College on Friday.

The Hornets trailed Roanoke College for the eighth and final bid into the ODAC Tournament by a game in the loss column, but with their win over the WildCats and the Maroons’ 69-59 loss to Washington & Lee, LC took over the eighth spot.

Lynchburg is now 5-9 in the ODAC. Roanoke is 4-9, the Generals are 6-8 and Hollins College holds onto to sixth place with a 7-8 record. Emory & Henry is 1-12 and Randolph 0-15.

The Hornets (6-13 overall) still have six games left beginning today at Hollins and include home games against the Wasps (Feb. 10) and the Maroons (Feb. 14) and a road game to wrap up the regular season against W&L on Feb. 17.

“We are on that bubble at the end of the ODAC and we don’t know which games we are going to have to win, so we have to win them all to be sure,” Lynchburg coach Abby Pyzik said. “The experience of the ODAC Tournament is huge as you build (your program). It’s important not just for the freshmen to get their feet wet, but for our seniors that have put in so much time. It would be heartbreaking for me for them (not to earn a bid).”

The Hornets’ defense clamped down on the WildCats in the first half holding Randolph to just 13 points over the first 20 minutes. The WildCats were just 6 of 25 (24 percent) from the field and turned the ball over 13 times in the first half.

“It took us a while to be aggressive on offense,” Randolph coach Allison Nichols said. “They are a lot bigger than we are and we were trying to get our girls to take them off the dribble, but it took us about 25 minutes to start doing that.”

Lynchburg also used its height advantage to drive into the paint and get to the foul line where the Hornets’ front-court players made 11 of 12 free throws in the first half as they took a 30-13 lead into the break.

“We really focused on the defense end early and that was really important,” Pyzik said. “We knew their game plan would be to pack it in (on defense) and we didn’t want to settle for jumpers.”

Randolph rallied to cut the deficit to 28-25 with 9:59 to play on back-to-back buckets by Brianna Lowry. But Lynchburg’s Shannon Allan answered with three consecutive foul-line jumpers to start a 10-0 LC run that gave the Hornets their largest lead of the night, 48-25 with 5:46 to play.

“Randolph fought really, really hard to get back into the game,” Pyzik said. “The shots Shannon made were a statement. That was pretty powerful.”

Allan led all scorers with 21 points. She also had six rebounds and four blocks.

“Every win is important and every game is an important game and it really meant a lot to us (tonight),” Allan said. “Last time (against Hollins, a 73-71 defeat) was a rough loss. Were are definitely going to have and edge about us tomorrow.”

Lowry and Bonnie Bishop tied with a team-high nine points for the WildCats.

“That was probably one of our best efforts on defense all season,” Nichols said. “If you take off those free throws at the end they really just scored 52 points and they had been putting up 70 on some of the top teams in the league. We could it have packed it in, but we played hard for 40 minutes.”