We love when the state's teams play each other, but since we have a stake in both teams these matchups are kind of tricky to recap. So in the interest of full disclosure for each team, we're going to split our ODU-Richmond report into two sections - the good news, and the Old Dominion news.
Richmond 65, Old Dominion 43:
- The good: The scary thing for the Spiders' future opponents is Richmond beat ODU by 22 without playing over its head. Sure, Brittani Shells had 23 points (yawn), Crystal Goring dominated the boards with a career-high 17 rebounds and Genevieve Okoro was a pleasant surprise with 16 points and 9 rebounds. But for the most part, Richmond simply did what Richmond usually does - play disruptive defense (11 steals) and get the ball moving up the floor. After nine games, the Spiders' established level of performance is fairly high. And as they proved Sunday and a couple of weeks ago against Hampton, if you're weak, they'll kill you with it.
- The Old Dominion: Wow. We figured the 44 points the Lady Monarchs managed against Tennessee last week was rock-bottom. Who knew? No point in recounting all the ugly stats from the box score. Suffice to say the Lady Monarchs simply couldn't make a shot, missing layups, 3-pointers and virtually everything in between. They also got crushed on the boards and turned it over 24 times.... Oh yeah, that's right, we're not recounting the box score. All credit to Richmond. But we've seen the Lady Monarchs give a much better account of themselves against other quality teams. Maybe the players were distracted by the upcoming exams. A prescription for disaster? Sure. But spending a basketball game thinking about exams isn't the worst thing. Now, sitting in exams thinking about basketball, that would be the worst thing.
Middle Tennessee State 81, James Madison 75: As expected, an entertaining back-and-forth game featuring two of the nation's best Silent Majority teams. We had hoped that Dawn Evans could carry the Dukes to victory back in her homestate, and Lord knows she tried with 27 points of 10-of-30 shooting. But we had no idea MTSU sophomore reserve Icelyn Elie would pick today to have her breakout game, and neither did Dukes coach Kenny Brooks. "You have to say we were surprised," Brooks said. "Any time you see a kid who averages seven points a game, you do not think in your wildest dreams that they would get 25 and 16 rebounds." An Elie 3-pointer with 2:25 remaining erased JMU's final lead and put the Blue Raiders ahead to stay at 73-71.
George Mason 69, Ohio 53: The Patriots appear to be getting the hang of this 40 minutes of basketball thing. For the second straight game, Mason followed a solid first half with an even better second, as the Patriots expanded a 15-point halftime lead to 26 while cruising to victory. Ashleigh Braxton led the way with 17 points on 7-of-12 shooting, and Taleia Moton added 13 in an otherwise balanced attack.
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