James Madison ran its home winning streak to 17 games with a 64-43 victory over Virginia Commonwealth in Colonial Athletic Association women’s basketball team Thursday night at the JMU Convocation Center.
The Dukes improved to 10-3 overall and evened their league record at 1-1, while VCU dropped to 8-5 and 1-1 in CAA play.
VCU, which shot only 24 percent (15-63) from the field, had its lowest-scoring game since a 42-37 loss at Delaware on Feb. 7, 2008.
Three Dukes scored in double figures, led by redshirt junior guard Jasmine Gill (Greensboro, N.C./Page) with 15. Redshirt senior forward Lauren Whitehurst (Chesapeake, Va./Indian River) added 11 points along with a team-high seven rebounds, and sophomore guard Kirby Burkholder (Bridgewater, Va./Turner Ashby) finished with 11 points, seven rebounds, six assists and five steals.
VCU was led by freshman center Aprill McRae (Raleigh, N.C./Southeast) with 11 points and freshman guard Christina Carter (Thomasville, N.C./Thomasville) with 10. Senior Courtney Hurt (Conyers, Ga./Salem) had a game-high 15 rebounds but scored only eight points. Hurt entered the contest ranked third in the NCAA in scoring at 24.6 points per game.
The game was tight in the early going, with six ties and six lead changes in the first 14 minutes. With the scored tied at 17 with 6:34 to play, the Dukes closed out the half by outscoring the Rams 12-4 to take a 29-21 lead into intermission. Five JMU players scored during the run, capped by a Burkholder three-pointer with 4.3 seconds on the clock.
JMU scored the first five points of the second half on a put-back by Gill and a three-pointer by Burkholder to go up by 13, 34-21 at 18:56, and the Dukes held a double-digit lead the rest of the way.
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