ACU (1-0, 0-0) grabbed its first win of the season on Monday taking down Southwestern Assemblies of God (0-1) in the season opener 77-52.
All 14 Wildcats saw action in Monday’s contest and although they came off to a slow start, picked up the energy in the second half to pull away for the 25-point victory.
“I’m really glad to start our season,” head coach Julie Goodenough said. “It’s really fun to play at home. I think we really needed to get to our season and play a game and I think that some of the deficiencies that we had in the game today maybe will make a little bit more sense to us now that we’ve played a real game and are trying to win.”
The first five minutes of the game saw the teams exchange buckets, but back-to-back three-pointers from freshman guard Payton Hull gave the Wildcats the lead. However, the Lions would respond and after a last second shot to end the quarter, SAGU took a one point lead into the second quarter.
The second quarter began with three straight charges taken by the Wildcats, which seemed to give the team some momentum moving forward as they did not allow a point for the first five minutes of the second quarter. Shots began to fall for the Wildcats now and ACU would win the quarter 22-9 to take a 12-point lead into halftime.
“We say that team first wins and I think that just started to play a role,” Hull said. “We all started communicating better on defense. Our defense wasn’t great but after the first quarter we started to get better.”
ACU continued to extend the lead in the third quarter, which included an 8-0 run to give the Wildcats their first 20-point lead of the night.
In the fourth, ACU went on a five minute 11-3 scoring run, despite only having one made three in the quarter and would hold the Lions to only eight points to take the win comfortably.
Hull led the way for the Wildcats with 14 points and three made three-pointers and freshman forward Emma Troxell accounted for 10 points in her first collegiate contest as well.
“We’ve been talking about our 2023 class for a long time,” Goodenough said. “They have been a really fun class so far to get to work with, they are coachable, they work very hard and are competitive and I thought they were all ready to play when subbed into the game today, so really proud of them for that.”
Junior guard Aspen Thorton finished with 12 points to go along with three assists and steals as well and redshirt sophomore Addison Martin had 13 points herself.
The Wildcats finished the game shooting 42.6% from the field and 31.3% from beyond the arch. However, one area the Wildcats struggled in were free throws as the team shot only 50% missing 15 total for the game.
“Overall, I thought that our team supported each other today and came out and played hard for one another,” Goodenogh said.
The Wildcats are back in action at 7 p.m. on Thursday in Moody Coliseum where they will take on Rice with the game streaming live on ESPN+.
