The ACU women’s basketball team fell to the Lamar University Lady Cardinals Saturday afternoon in Beaumont, 76-72, dropping their record to 11-9 overall.
The team’s 3-6 Southland record has ACU at fourth to last in the conference, just half a game behind Southeastern Louisiana. But that doesn’t mean the Wildcats couldn’t take the Southland’s top team to the brink of defeat.
“Even though we didn’t win the game Saturday, I think we left there with a lot of confidence,” Goodenough said. “We took the first place team in the Southland conference to the very last possession of the game and I think that speaks volumes for our second year being a Div. 1 program, so I think we came home with some confidence that we can compete with them.”
Lamar is home to two of the conference’s top scorers in junior JaMeisha Edwards and graduate student Dominique Edwards, who combined for 34 points and 18 rebounds against the ‘Cats, but ACU’s 21 defensive rebounds, compared to just 9 for the Lamar offense, limited the Lady Cardinal’s scoring throughout the game.
“They’ve got so many scoring threats on their team that it’s hard to really focus on one of two players because they have a lot of different players that can score,” Goodenough said. “But I felt like for the most part our defense was pretty solid.”
Right up until the end, the Wildcats were in a position where they could’ve left Lamar University with a conference road win, with missed three-pointers while down by just two with :18 and :10 seconds left, respectively, but the Wildcats wouldn’t have had the opportunities they had if it wasn’t for their top shooters, sophomores Sydney Shelstead, and Lizzy and Suzzy Dimba, who all combined for 34 points and 27 rebounds up against of the Southland conference’s best defenses.
“I think it was a great team effort on our part, really distributing the ball, making the extra pass to a teammate that was a maybe a little bit more open,” Goodenough said. “I think that we do have one of the best scoring teams in the league. We’ve got some pretty explosive scorers on our team as well and it was fun to see them really balance out the scoring that Lamar had. It was such a great game and I was proud of our players for being able to shoot the ball the way that we did on the road in somebody else’s gym, so it was two great offensive teams that really brought their strengths to the table.”
The team’s next game will be against Lamar again on Thursday, Feb. 5 in Moody Coliseum at 7 p.m.
