Hoos Have “Little” Trouble with Monmouth, Win 73-45
Thursday, December 18 2008 by Tim
About six minutes into the first half, Lyndra Littles entered the floor for the first time in the 2008-2009 season. A minute later, she calmly drained a three pointer for her first points. Six minutes later, she was 5 for 5 and had scored 11 of the Cavaliers’ 17 points during that stretch.
Quite the entrance.
Approximately six minutes into the second half, Monica Wright drained a mid-range jumper, giving her 25 points. The score at the time? Virginia 57, Monmouth 25. Just as she did in the Illinois game, Monica was keeping pace with the opponent well into the second half all by herself.
She’s leaving little doubt that she is one of the two best players in the country.
Monica Wright would finish the game with 28 points – easily surpassing her ACC-leading season average of 21.8 – on 13 of 16 shooting. She added four assists and five steals in 29 minutes on the floor. Lyndra Littles finished with 17 points and 5 rebounds in 21 minutes. Chelsea Shine, making her first start in place of the surgery-hampered Aisha Mohammed, was the final Cavalier to make it into double figures.
The one major sore spot for the Cavaliers was rebounding. The Hawks out-rebounded the Hoos 39-33 on the game, including a 12-6 advantage on the offensive glass. The discrepancy was not completely from a lack of effort by the Cavaliers, however. Monmouth gave a strong effort, but also shot less than 30% from the floor for the game and many of their offensive rebounds were, shall we saw, awkward bounces where the Cavalier players would have been in position for a more normal rebound. We were also playing without Aisha Mohammed – out for a few weeks with arthroscopic surgery. Still, its something we need to keep an eye on as we inch closer to ACC play.
The Cavaliers are back in action against Mount St. Mary’s on Sunday at 1pm.
Note: I’ve added a list of the Women’s Basketball All-Time Scoring Leaders. We’ve got two players about the enter the top ten, so I thought people might be interested in watching them climb the rankings.
The difference in rebounds was entirely due to offensive boards. When you shoot 30%, you are going to get some offensive boards. Similarly, when you shoot 50%, there's gonna be less offensive boards.
I'm not overly concerned. We blew them out, and its not like they've been getting blown out all season.
We may well miss Aisha though. Here's to her getting healthy ASAP.