No. 17 Cardinals Pin 56-38 Setback on Gophers

Kollock Tallies Goucher's First Five Points, Finishes with 14

TOWSON, Md. — Precious Kollock (Baltimore, Md./Patapsco) accounted for Goucher's first five points in this evening's Landmark Conference game against Catholic in the Decker Sports & Recreation Center. She nailed a 3-point attempt on the Gophers' first possession of the contest to give her team a 3-2 lead and later converted a layup to put head coach Didi Cotton's squad back on top, 5-4.

After Kollock's layup, however, Goucher failed to score another point until Monique Welch (Reisterstown, Md./Franklin) found Amaka Ezeani (Silver Spring, Md./Paint Branch) open in the paint for an easy bucket, trimming Catholic's advantage to 12-7 with 11:54 remaining in the first half.

The Gophers would add only seven more points to their total before time expired in the opening period: Welch fed Ezeani for another short jumper, Sharnell Huff (Bowie, Md./Bowie) knocked down three free-throw attempts and Kollock made two foul shots of her own.

Still, even though they were able to muster only 14 points and were 4-for-20 from the field, the Gophers were down only 10 points to the nationally ranked Cardinals after 20 minutes of play.

The deficit dropped to as few as six points during the early stages of the second half before Catholic went on a 30-5 run that spanned more than 13 minutes, enough to propel the Cardinals to a convincing 56-38 victory.

It wasn't until a successful jumper by Olivia Nono (Silver Spring, Md./Montgomery Blair) on Goucher's opening possession of the second half that the Gophers had a fourth player get into the scoring act against a team that was No. 17 in the USA Today Division III Coaches Poll that came out Tuesday. The home team didn't get a point from its bench until a TaQuasia Lambert (Brooklyn, N.Y./Patapsco) got a layup to drop with 11:36 remaining in the contest.

One thing that has made the Cardinals (17-1, 6-1 Landmark) so successful in 2012-13 is they held their first 17 opponents to a .309 shooting percentage. The Gophers (5-12, 1-6 Landmark) cashed in on five of their final seven shots from the field and that still left them at 30.2 percent for the game.

Kollock was the only double-digit scorer for Goucher as she furnished the Gophers with 14 points. Nono's eight rebounds were tops among all players on both teams.

Jill Woerner was the leading scorer for Catholic as she went 9-for-12 from the field on the way to a 19-point effort. Katarina Owunna supplied the Cardinals with 10 points and a team-high seven rebounds.