Richmond (5-4) held off James Madison (3-4) in the final minutes to post a 70-66 win in women’s basketball on Sunday afternoon at the JMU Convocation Center.
Spiders junior guard Kristina King (Alpharetta, Ga./Milton) scored a career-high 29 points, and junior guard Becca Wann (Chesterfield, Va./Cosby) came off the bench to contribute career highs of 21 points and 15 rebounds.
JMU was led by senior guard Tarik Hislop (Silver Spring, Md./Paint Branch) with 22 points. Junior guard Kirby Burkholder (Bridgewater, Va./Turner Ashby) scored 14, and freshman guard Precious Hall (Tallahassee, Fla./Maclay) came off the bench for a career-high 11 points. The Dukes’ top rebounder was sophomore forward/center Crystal Ross (Philadelphia, Pa./Smyrna, Del. H.S.) with 10, one below her career high.
Richmond scored 11 unanswered points, seven of them from King, to build an eight-point lead (23-15 at 6:42) in the first half. The Spiders led by as many as eight (38-30 at 17:28) in the second half, but the Dukes kept hanging on until a late 14-6 JMU scoring run gave the home team a 61-60 lead with 2:44 remaining.
Hislop and freshman guard Angela Mickens (Staunton, Va./Lee) scored all of JMU’s 14 points during that stretch, with Hislop scoring eight and Mickens six. The scoring spurt began with a Mickens three-point play at 7:11.
But Richmond redshirt senior guard Rachael Bilney Mill Valley, Calif./The Branson School) knocked down a 3-pointer at 2:26 to give the Spiders the lead for good, 63-61.
JMU missed its next seven field-goal tries, and the Spiders began a series of trips to the foul line, where they converted seven of eight free throws in the final 57 seconds. King was four-for-four and freshman guard Lauren Tolson (Frederick, Md./Frederick) hit three of four tries. Meanwhile, the Dukes’ only points came on two foul shots by Hislop with 17.6 seconds left and a 3-pointer by Hall with 5.1 seconds to play.
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