James Madison women’s basketball used an opening 10-0 run and led the entire game as the Dukes defeated Davidson 73-57 on the road at John M. Belk Arena on Sunday afternoon.
The Dukes improved to 7-1 on the season while the Wildcats dropped to 3-5.
Junior guard Precious Hall (Tallahassee, Fla./Maclay School) eclipsed the 1,000-point plateau with her second 3-pointer of the game, becoming just the 27th player in JMU history to hit the mark. She is the third fastest to the mark, scoring 1,000 points in just 70 games for the purple and gold.
She finished with 20 points on the day (1,013 career points) and extended her streak of consecutive double-digit scoring performances to 17 games, tied for the 13th longest in JMU history.
For the second game in a row, junior point guard Angela Mickens (Staunton, Va./Robert E. Lee) set a career high in points with 16. She also tied a career-high five steals and added seven rebounds and five assists on the afternoon.
Redshirt-senior center Lauren Okafor (Hamden, Conn./Hopkins School (Providence)) tallied the lone double-double of the day, dropping in 15 points and 15 rebounds for the Dukes. Senior forward Toia Giggetts (Norfolk, Va./Lake Taylor) rounded out the double-digit scoring for JMU with 12 points.
Davidson’s Lillian McCabe tied for game-high honors with 20 points while Hannah Early added 11 points and a team-high nine rebounds for the Wildcats.
Redshirt-junior guard Jazmon Gwathmey (Bealeton, Va./Liberty H.S.) became just the eighth player in JMU history to the 100-block mark, denying four Davidson attempts on the afternoon to get to 100 career blocks. She surpassed current assistant coach Jennifer Brown (JMU ’08), who blocked 99 shots during her time with the Dukes.
After the Dukes lead by as many as 21 (34-13, 5:09 first half), a 12-0 Davidson run to close the stanza cut the JMU lead to single digits (36-27). The Wildcats battled to within five points (41-36) with 15:52 to play in the second half, but the Dukes buckled down and held Davidson without a field goal over the final 7:54 of the game to win by 16 points.
JMU shot 45.9 percent from the floor (28-of-61) as a team while limiting Davidson to 32.8 percent shooting (21-of-64). The Dukes also outrebounded the Wildcats 44-39, though Davidson held the edge in offensive rebounds 16-15.
The Dukes take a week-long break for final exams before traveling to Ohio on Monday, December 15 for a 7 p.m. tip-off.
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Chris Graham
