JMU women dominate South Florida

James Madison held South Florida to 12 first-half points and went on to beat the Bulls 72-45 in National Women’s Invitation Tournament round of 16 basketball action Friday night at the JMU Convocation Center.

JMU now hosts Virginia Sunday, March 25, in a quarterfinal-round game at 2 p.m. at the JMU Convocation Center.

The JMU Athletics Ticket Office will be open from 1 -5 p.m. on Saturday, March 24.  The ticket office can be reached by phone at 540-JMU-Duke (568-3853) or by visiting JMUSports.com and clicking on TICKETS.

The Dukes improved its record to 27-7, while South Florida ended its season at 19-16.

JMU trailed only at the opening basket of the game and outscored USF 13-3 in the final 5:39 of the first half to expand a two-point (11-9) lead to 24-12 at intermission.

USF opened the second half with an 8-3 run to cut the margin to seven, 27-20, at 16:40.  The Dukes responded by outscoring the Bulls 12-5 in under three minutes to stretch the lead to 14, 39-25, at 13:22.

Freshman forward Toia Giggetts (Norfolk, Va./Lake Taylor) scored four points and junior forward Nikki Newman (Harrisonburg, Va./Turner Ashby) and sophomore guard Kirby Burkholder (Bridgewater, Va./Turner Ashby) each hit 3-pointers during the run.  After that point, USF got no closer than 12 the rest of the game.

JMU junior guard Tarik Hislop (Silver Spring, Md./Paint Branch) led all scorers with 17 points and was 7-for-8 at the foul line.  Burkholder scored 15 (8-10 FTs) and redshirt junior guard Jasmine Gill (Greensboro, N.C./Page) added 11 points, nine of which came at the foul line where she was 9-for 11.

Newman finished with nine points, all on three-pointers, and had nine rebounds.  Redshirt senior forward Lauren Whitehurst (Chesapeake, Va./Indian River) was the game’s leading rebounder with 11.

USF was led in scoring by junior guard Inga Orekhova (Sevastapol, Ukraine) with 11 and senior guard Jasmine Wynne (Jacksonville, Fla./University Christian) with 10.

USF hit only 21.7 percent (13-60) from the field, a JMU opponent-low this season.

In a game in which a combined 48 fouls were called, the teams combined to shoot 69 foul shots.  JMU had season highs of 32 free throws and 43 free throw attempts.

The Dukes out-rebounded USF 62-33.