Drexel University Athletics
Drexel University
James Madison
Dukes Nip Drexel 60-56 in Harrisonburg
1/18/2009 4:22:58 PM | Women's Basketball
Harrisonburg, Va. - Kamile Nacickaite drained a three-pointer with four seconds left to bring Drexel within one point at 57-56 in one of the tightest conference games of the season. But Dawn Evans, who scored the final 22 points of the game for James Madison, converted 3-of-4 free throws in the final seconds as Drexel was unable to get off a game-tying offering in a 60-56 loss to the Dukes (11-5, 4-1). The match up of the conference's top scorers did not disappoint as Drexel's Gabriela Marginean led her team with 25 points, 18 in the second half, and Evans scored 23 of her game-high 30 in the period in response. Drexel falls to 8-8 overall and 3-2 in CAA play.
Evans made 11-of-14 free-throws in the second half, finishing the game with 13 of her 30 points from the line on 20 trips. She also led the Dukes with five assists. Nacickaite led the Dragons with eight rebounds and she also dished out a season-high three assists to go with eight points. Nicole Hester led the team with five assists. Drexel finished the game shooting 40.4 percent from the floor and the Dragons went 5-for-17 from deep. For the second game in a row, the Dragons minimized their turnovers, committing a season-low 11. But the difference was made on the boards where James Madison outworked the Dragons 41-30 and 17-8 on the offensive glass.
After getting off to a slow start in a first half that saw neither team shoot better than 30 percent, both teams found their way to the basket in the second half and the game took on the flow of a boxing match. Neither team held more than a six-point lead in the entire contest. James Madison looked to enter halftime with that advantage before Jasmina Rosseel canned a three-pointer with three ticks on the clock to strike the first blow for the Dragons and make it a 24-21 game at halftime.
Marginean scored Drexel's first eight points of the second half on a series of powerful cuts to the basket for layups. A spinning jumper from Brooke Cornish on the wing gave Drexel its first lead of the game, 36-35, with 12:50 left in the half. The teams traded baskets over the next four minutes with Evans and Brittany Crowell making three-pointers and Marginean responding with a pair of driving layups. Marginean put the Dragons back on top at the 8:45 mark with her seventh bucket of the period, making the score 44-43.
Evans quickly answered with a three-pointer in transition to put her team back ahead. This time the counterpunch came from rookie Marisa Crane who made two of the biggest shots of her young career. The freshman guard went right after Evans, driving the left side for a layup that knotted the game at 46-46. Then, after sprinting down the offensive rebound off a missed jumper by Marginean, Crane collected herself to hit an arcing three-pointer from the left wing to put Drexel up 49-48 at the 3:36 mark.
But this would be the last lead Drexel would hold in the contest as Evans' free-throw barrage would ensue for the remaining three and a half minutes. During the remainder of the game she would step to the line 12 times and convert on 10 of her attempts.
Drexel cut the lead to one-point on three occasions over the final minute and a half, but each time Evans would answer with a pair of free-throws on the other end of the court. With 11 seconds left Crane again found herself with an open drive to the basket but her layup spun just off its mark and bounced off the front of the rim. Drexel's foul on the ensuing possession gave James Madison a chance to ice the game with a five-point lead and less than 10 seconds remaining. But Evans made just one of two and Nacickaite's three-pointer gave the Dragons one last chance.
After Evans converted two more free throws with four seconds left, Drexel set up an inbounds play for Jasmina Rosseel. Hester delivered a baseball pass to a cutting Rosseel at half court, but her momentum carried her out of bounds while catching the ball and she landed out of bounds, unable to get off a shot. Evans made another free-throw to put the game out of reach and broke up the inbounds pass that followed as time expired.
The thrilling contest got off to an less-than-exciting start as both teams shot poorly in the opening period. Drexel's defense did well to force the Dukes to miss nine of their first 10 from the floor. But the Dragons did not do much better on their end of the court, making just 6-of-21 from the field in the first half and only 2-of-11 three-point attempts. James Madison's shooting was even worse, 26.2 percent but the Dukes gathered nine offensive rebounds, and out-boarded the Dragons 23-16 overall, to earn nine more shots which equated to six second-chance points. The Dragons' defense pressured James Madison on the interior, but often found itself out of position for rebounds. Peterson and Rosseel combined to hold Evans to 2-for-11 shooting in the first half.
The contest was Drexel's first game at the JMU Convocation Center this season. The site will play host to the CAA Tournament in March. Drexel is now 0-6 against James Madison in Harrisonburg. Marginean's 25-point effort moved her ahead of Catherine Scanlon for sixth place on Drexel's all-time scoring list with 1,452 points, one behind 2008 graduate Narissa Suber, who served as a radio analyst for the game. The Dragons return to Philadelphia for a two-game homestand against Northeastern, on Thursday, and Towson, on Sunday in a game that will be televised on The Comcast Network.
