ASHLAND – It may have been snowing outside Thursday but it was raining threes inside Kates Gymnasium for the Ashland University women’s basketball team.
The No 1 ranked Eagles hit a team record 17 3-pointers led by senior Kelsey Peare who knocked down eight from behind the arc as the Eagles rolled past Lake Erie, 111-70, in a Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference contest.
“It felt good,” said Peare. “I had some great passes from my teammates.”
The win was the 25th consecutive win to start the season, a new program record for Ashland (25-0, 17-0).
“It’s just a testament to this team and their consistency, their ability to work and their ability to just stay present and focusing on what’s next,” said Ashland head coach Robyn Fralick. “It’s a great record and yet it just seems really peripheral in the whole scheme of us focusing on consistent improvement.”
The Storm (7-16, 5-12) cut the Eagle lead to 8-7 in the first before Ashland went on a 17-0 run that included three 3-pointers by Peare.
But the Eagles weren’t just on fire on the offensive end. Ashland’s pressure defense forced 18 Storm turnovers in the first half, leading to 23 Eagle points and a 45-26 Ashland lead.
After Ashland opened up a 59-38 lead halfway through the third, Lake Erie chipped away at the lead, cutting it to 13 points before Ashland went on a 7-0 run to end the quarter.
“The biggest thing (during the Lake Erie run) is we weren’t playing with much energy or alertness on the defensive end, and it takes a unit to do that. You’ve got to really be bought in to guarding as a group,” Fralick said. “We got away from that. It wasn’t something that we couldn’t guard. It was that we weren’t guarding with the amount of energy that’s required at this level.”
The Eagles topped the century mark for the ninth time this season when freshman Sara Loomis knocked down a triple with 2:16 left in the game.
Every player on the roster made their way into the scoring column Thursday led by Peare with 24 points on 8-of-12 shooting from behind the arc and five others in double figures. Andi Daugherty scored 13 points, grabbed five rebounds and dished out 5 assists. Laina Snyder totaled 10 points, grabbed six rebounds, had four assists and swiped five steals. Jodi Johnson scored 15 and grabbed five rebounds. Julie Worley scored 13 off the bench and Maddie Dackin added 10.
Ashland had 33 assists on 36 made field goals and shot 56 percent from the field, including a blistering 70 percent in the second half.
Lake Erie’s Kayla Gabor, the leading scorer in the GLIAC, was held in check for most of the game before adding 5 of her 17 points late in the game, long after the result was no longer in doubt. Gabor, who is averaging 19.2 points per game, scored 25 points in an Ashland win over Lake Erie in January.
“She’s a dynamic scorer. The first time we played there she scored a lot of points on us. She hit some tough shots. She makes tough shots, but we knew we needed to do a better job as a unit. I thought we had some really good individual matchups on her, but more importantly, as a unit I thought we did a much better job on her this time around,” Fralick said.
The next game for Ashland is Thursday, Feb. 16 at 5:30 p.m. at home against Walsh (12-11, 8-8).
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