Tiger women fight for first home win

MT. PLEASANT - For the entire month of March, the Iowa Wesleyan women's basketball team had to deal with the type of ‘madness' a college hoops team doesn't like to deal with. The Tigers lost their first six games of the month, including three very winnable games which slipped away on their own home floor. On Saturday, they finally got theirs.

Iowa Wesleyan hit the gas pedal in a St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference victory over Blackburn College, finishing the Beavers off 85-66 to complete the regular season sweep and secure their first home win of the season.

'It was very important,” said interim head coach Jazmyne Laskey. 'All season we've been here and we've been close and just don't close.”

Per usual, the Tigers looked strong in the opening minutes. A balanced scoring attack helped push Iowa Wesleyan to an 18-12 lead after one quarter and a 33-21 halftime advantage.

But this time, the Tigers didn't fade away in the final two quarters. Iowa Wesleyan had seen two halftime leads disappear on their home floor, and watched a single-digit deficit against Eureka blossom into a 28-point loss, but things finally clicked when they needed to in the second-to-last home game on the schedule.

'We've had a lot of games where we would get the lead, and then we would start to let the other team come back, said senior guard Morgan McCrea. 'In this game, we just kept fighting.”

The Beavers did make it interesting. Blackburn cut the lead down to just four points in the second half, but the Tigers used a full-court pressure defense to create easy shots down the stretch to help them pull away.

'We tend to fall back and lose the lead,” said freshman post Anija Simmons. 'We were just trying to hype ourselves back up and get mentally focused.”

It was a big day for the Tigers' leading scorers. McCreak led the team with 25 points in the win, and Simmons went off for 19 points and 20 rebounds.

Sydney Farrar scored 13 points on 4-for-5 shooting, and also dished out a team-high five assists. Hannah Sykora had 12 points and five steals. Asantee Tillman scored nine points. Taylor Wiatrak had five, and Chris Heimann finished with two.

The Tigers are now 2-10 overall and 2-6 in conference play. They will host Greenville University (6-9, 4-3) on Wednesday night.