Women's Basketball Tames Towson on Senior Day, 50-45

Sunday, March 1

Daskalakis Athletic Center

3:00 p.m.

Drexel University

19-9, 13-4CAA

Towson

10-19, 6-11CAA

Towson

Drexel

Photo by: Ryan Samson

Women's Basketball Tames Towson on Senior Day, 50-45

3/1/2015 5:24:00 PM | Women's Basketball

Box Score

PHILADELPHIA – The Drexel women's basketball team has something to celebrate on Senior Day as the Dragons finished their home schedule with a 50-45 win over Towson. The win, a season-high fifth in a row for Drexel, clinches the No. 2 seed in the upcoming CAA Championships for the Dragons. Drexel led by double digits for most of the game before a late charge by the Tigers closed the gap in the final minutes.

Rachel Pearson had 15 points to lead the Dragons, hitting five three-pointers on the afternoon. Jackie Schluth, one of two seniors for Drexel, had 10 points and five rebounds on her Senior Day. Schluth is in her fifth year with the program, but may be back for a sixth pending a petition for a medical hardship. Jamila Thompson, the Dragons' other senior, filled the stat sheet with seven points, six assists and four rebounds. Sarah Curran added nine points and Alexis Smith chipped in six, to go along with three assists and a career high nine rebounds.

The Dragons (19-9, 13-4) secured a second-place finish in the CAA with the victory and Hofstra's loss to Elon on Long Island earlier in the afternoon. For Drexel, it marks their highest finish since winning the regular season and tournament championships in 2008-09, and the program's second-highest CAA finish ever.

Senior Day got off to the start any good Senior Day should, with the outgoing members of the team scoring the first points. For the Dragons, the seniors got the first six points, in fact, as Jackie Schluth knocked down a couple of jumpers and Jamila Thompson drove to the hoop for an impressive lay-up. Those scores put the Dragons on top 6-2 early, a lead they would add to when Sarah Curran got the rest of the classes into the mix with a banked-in three-pointer from the top of the key. The trey marked eight straight three-pointers hit for Curran, dating back to Feb. 19 at the College of Charleston.

Up 9-5 just over eight minutes into the action, the Dragons took over in a big way. It started when Thompson got to the free throw line and hit one of her two from the charity stripe to extend the lead to five. That free throw began a 14-0 run fueled in large part by Rachel Pearson. The sharpshooter hit three of four three-point attempts in that stretch, with Curran and Alexis Smith adding jumpers to make it 23-5.

The Dragons kept up the pressure through the rest of the first half and went into the locker room up 30-14. It was the fewest points scored by any Drexel opponent since the College of Charleston netted just 11 in Drexel's 64-47 win over the Cougars in Philadelphia on Jan. 30. Pearson finished the stanza with 12 points, while Curran added seven and Schluth six. Smith, making her fourth-consecutive start, set a career high before intermission with seven first-half rebounds. As a team, Drexel collected 22 first-half rebounds compared to just 19 for the Tigers.

Coming out of the locker rooms, the Dragons were struggling to get the offense going, and had just six points over the first eight minutes of the stanza. What had been an 18 point lead after the first possession of the half was whittled down to 10 by Towson when LaTorri Hines-Allen knocked down a jumper. Hines-Allen finished with a game-high 19 points, 13 of which came in the second half.

Schluth, who helped keep Drexel in firm control through the early going in the second half, worked inside for a lay-up to make it a 12-point game with 11:43 to play. After Hines-Allen once again sliced into Drexel's lead, Florence Ouattara picked an opportune time for her only points of the night. Ouattara drove to the basket from the left corner, dropped in a floater and was fouled. She finished the three-point play, making it 41-28 with nine minutes remaining.

Drexel led by 12 with 3:30 to play when the Tigers made one last push, which nearly was enough to steal the upset. It was fueled by long-range shooting, particularly that of Ciara Webb, who had sat for much of the second half to that point with foul trouble. After Dominique Johnson nailed a three-pointer at the 3:30 mark, Webb stepped into a trey to make it a six-point game with2:20 remaining. Drexel turned the ball over on the subsequent possession, and Webb made it a three-point game when she hit a long, contested three-pointer from the left wing.

The Tigers were within a point with 43 seconds to play when Schluth drove in from the left side and found Curran alone under the hoop. The senior dished it off to the sophomore, who finished at the basket for Drexel's first points in 4:17 to give the Dragons some breathing room at 46-43. Towson tried to free itself up for a tying three on the other end, but threw the ball away. Jamila Thompson, the senior, iced the game away with two free throws with four seconds remaining to send the Dragons home happy.

Drexel will wrap up its regular season on Wednesday night when the Dragons visit Northeastern. The Dragons have not played the Huskies since the teams' conference opener on January 4, a 58-35 victory for Drexel at the Daskalakis Athletic Center. Wednesday's game will tip off at 7:00 p.m. as Drexel attempts to go into postseason play riding a six-game winning streak.