Squad Falls To a Strong Maryville

 

 

 

By Zak HudakSports Editor

Despite a valiant first half effort, the Eagles dropped to Maryville College (Tenn.) 80-61 last Sunday. The loss was their second-in-a-row and brought their season's record to 3-2.

"[The Maryville Scots are] not street players," junior guard Ilene Tsao said. "If they make a mistake, they know how to come back. They stick to the X's and O's. They play basketball the way it's supposed to be played."

The Maryville Scots took the court with great momentum, earning a strong 21-6 lead with 11 minutes remaining in the first half. Beginning with a jumper and a layup from freshman forward Dumebi Egbuna and headed by five points from Tsao, the Eagles then went on a 13-point rally, tying the score at 21 with five and a half minutes remaining in the half. During that time, the Eagles notched six rebounds and six steals. In the remainder of the first half, the Scots outscored the Eagles by seven points, leaving the scoreboard at 26-29.

The Scots rallied early in the second half, scoring 12-in-a-row and bringing the score to 51-33, but the Eagles responded by taking 10 of the next 12 points, six of which were brought by Egbuna. A three-point shot from junior guard Khadijah Sayyid with just under nine minutes remaining brought the Eagles' deficit to single digits, but an eight-point stretch from the Scots' made the score 65-48 with 7:12 on the clock. Maryville went on to keep their lead at 15 or more until the final buzzer.

"We sort of lulled into half time. We needed to come out strong during the second half," Tsao said. "We got the defensive stops, but we weren't converting on the offensive side. They kept hitting a lot of deep threes."

The Scots managed an impressive 59.7 shooting percent from three-point range, on top of a 47.5 percentage from the field. The Eagles, who shot 40 percent from the floor, were offensively led by Junior guard Khadijah Sayyid.

"They had a lot of hunger and probably wanted it a little more than we did," Sayyid said.

Although this game ended with a steep scoring deficit, Emory's games against Maryville are generally tight, according to Sayyid.

"It's usually a good game," she said. "We try to take each game as a championship game."

On Tuesday, the Eagles bounced back from their two consecutive losses with a 68-45 home decision over Sewanee: The University of the South (Tenn.).

"We lost two in-a-row and we took that pretty hard," Tsao said. "Our mentality going into [the Sewanee game] game was: this is where we sweat. This is where we work. We don't want to let anyone come into our court and think they can play with us. Our goal tonight was to get back on wind column and to get the ball rolling again."

The Eagles return to action next Monday against Agnes Scott College (Ga.) at the Woodruff Physical Education Center (WoodPEC).

"We responded really well to our losses," Sayyid said. "[The Sewanee game] showed us that our team has a lot of potential."

 

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