DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Think last year's heartbreaking buzzer beater loss at Prairie View A&M had been long forgotten by Bethune-Cookman?
They're basketball players, not Disney princesses. Let it go? Yeah, right.
Monday's 77-52 dismantling of Prairie View may have given Bethune-Cookman its first 3-0 start since 1991-92, but the satisfaction of redemption took precedence.
"I wanted to win this game," admitted
Kanesha Battle, who dropped in a career-high 22 points along with seven rebounds. "I didn't think I was going to hit all those shots. Just wanted to win."
Chasimmie Brown, who registered her third double-figure scoring night of the season, with 14, echoed Battle's sentiments.
"After losing that buzzer beater last year, winning this game was everything," Brown said.
Bethune-Cookman held Prairie View to 7-34 shooting in the middle period to open up a 67-38 advantage, but even then, Head Coach
Vanessa Blair-Lewis burned a time out to remind her team they were up 22 last year in Texas.
"That was our motivation," Blair-Lewis said. "We had to finish this game off."
With the early officiating resembling foul Oprah (Prairie View had four players foul out, all but two Lady Wildcats were whistled at least once and B-CU went to the line 37 times), Bethune-Cookman's starting defense got discombobulated.
It took Kanesha and Briana Battle coming off the bench,
Briana Hardee putting up a 10-point, 9 rebound effort in her first appearance, and Brown hitting early free throws to compensate.
"We needed Kanesha and Chasimmie to score because defensively, we were in so much foul trouble," Blair-Lewis said. "It [foul trouble] hurt both teams, but the only thing for us to mask it was to score."
Almost lost in the triumph was the play of
Ashanti Hunt, who struggled offensively but nearly Ice Cube-d again with eight points, nine rebounds and a career-high nine assists. She had a 15-16-7 near triple-double last week at FIU.
"Ashanti wasn't in foul trouble, but she was struggling offensively," Blair-Lewis said. We traded that off."
Bethune-Cookman hosts Southeastern Louisiana Sunday at 3 p.m.
