CHARLOTTE, NC – It was a tale of two halves Monday afternoon as the Chowan Hawks Women's basketball team erased a 19 point deficit to take a 56-53 victory over Livingstone College in the Opening Round of the CIAA Basketball Tournament.
The Lady Blue Bears opened the game on fire offensively, gaining a 9-1 advantage 5:37 into the game. That lead ballooned to 14 with 7:08 remaining when Khalia Boston drained a free throw for Livingstone. A Boston layup with 4:40 remaining put the Lady Blue Bears up 29-10. Things looked bleak for the Hawks at that point, but Talaya Lynch stopped things from getting worse.
Back to back layups by Lynch brought the score to 31-14 with 2:29 remaining in the half. She was not done, however, as she nailed two three pointers in the final 1:17 of the half to cut the halftime deficit to 13 at 33-20. Lynch scored the final 10 points for Chowan in the half.
Chowan maintained that momentum as the second half began. Two Najah Harris free throws at the 14:25 mark cut the deficit to 12 at 37-25. With 12:17 on the clock, the Hawks cut the LC lead to 39-35 following a Brittany Nicholson layup. That bucket concluded a 15-4 run for Chowan to open the half.
Over the next four minutes, Chowan could not cut the lead under four points. Two Talaya Lynch free throws at the 7:13 mark finally cut the deficit to two at 43-41. A Ransheda Jennings three and Danielle Coleman layup put the Hawks up 46-43 with 5:44 remaining.
Two more Talaya Lynch free throws gave Chowan a 53-50 lead with just 1:47 left in the contest. Chowan connected on 9 of their final 10 free throw attempts to seal the come from behind victory. Lynch led Chowan with 17 points, including going 7-8 from the charity stripe. She also grabbed a team-high 10 rebounds.
Ransheda Jennings scored 13 points and had a team-high 4 steals. Najah Harris tallied 11 points for the Hawks, including two three pointers. Jasmine Murray led Livingstone with 13 points and 10 rebounds. Chowan outscored Livingstone 36-20 in the second half. Livingstone's bench outscored Chowan's bench 21-2 for the game.
When asked how his team was able to respond from being down by 19, Head coach Patrick Mashuda responded “We've been in this situation before,” referring to being down by 17 to Bowie State on February 8th, a game Chowan won 53-51.
“We had a calm understanding of what we needed to do in the second half” said Mashuda, describing the mood in the Chowan locker room at halftime. He credited the ability to come back from such a large deficit on the senior leadership on the team and being in similar situations before.
Chowan will play Johnson C. Smith University Tuesday at 9:00pm in the Time Warner Cable Arena. Johnson C. Smith earned the #1 seed in the CIAA South after compiling a 14-3 CIAA record.
