The Eastern New Mexico women’s basketball team concluded its 2018-19 regular season with an important 71-63 road win at Texas Woman’s on Saturday.
After picking up the win, the Greyhounds wrapped up the regular season with a 19-9 overall record and finished in a three-way tie for third in the Lone Star Conference at 14-6, securing the No. 4 seed in the LSC Championship Tournament next week.
The Hounds jumped out to a fast start against the Pioneers (10-18, 7-13 LSC), scoring the first five points on a pair of jumpers from Treyanna Clay and Shelby Jones as well as a Clay free throw with 8:23 left in the opening quarter.
Texas Woman’s fought back to take its first lead of the game by stringing together an 8-2 run over the next 4:01 to make it an 8-7 Pioneers advantage.
Both defenses clamped down as neither team could score in nearly four minutes before Alivia Lewis sank a jumper with 48 seconds left to retake a 9-8 lead. The Pioneers’ Macy Wilkerson would put Texas Woman’s back in-front with a three-pointer on the ensuing possession to make it an 11-9 TWU edge after one quarter of play.
While the ENMU offense struggled in the first quarter, the Hounds found their stride in the second quarter by outscoring the Pioneers 22-12. Sophomore guard Jena Mehlbrech scored five of the first seven points for the Greyhounds in the period to give Eastern a 16-13 advantage with 7:28 remaining until halftime.
After Texas Woman’s strung together a 10-4 run of its own to recapture a 23-20 lead with 3:53 left, the Hounds closed out the quarter with an 11-0 run capped off on a Mehlbrech layup at the buzzer to send the Greyhounds into the half with the 31-23 lead.
The Pioneers fought back early in the second half, scoring the first six points of the third quarter to close the gap to 31-29 with 7:14 remaining, but Laura Rowe responded with back-to-back three pointers to push the Eastern edge back to eight with 5:36 to go.
Texas Woman’s made another push to close the gap to four at 37-33, but the Hounds rattled off nine unanswered thanks to a pair of three-pointers from Rowe and Mehlbrech to take their largest lead of the game at 46-33 with 2:24 left.
TWU had one last push at the end of the period as the Pioneers closed out the quarter with a 10-4 streak to make it a 50-43 Hounds lead going into the fourth.
Eastern opened the final quarter with five straight, thanks to a Shelby Jones three-point play and a Zamorye Cox fastbreak jumper off of a steal to put ENMU back up by 12 at 55-43 just 35 seconds in.
The Pioneers slowly chipped away at the ENMU lead over the next six minutes to shrink the gap to 63-56 with 3:44 remaining, but a stout ENMU defense held Texas Woman’s scoreless for more than two minutes while a Clay jumper and a pair of Chelsea Hunter free throws with 1:12 left pushed the Greyhound advantage back to double-digits at 67-56.
Eastern maintained its double-digit edge for the remainder of the game until the Pioneers sank a three-pointer just before the buzzer to end the game at 71-63.
Offensively, Eastern shot 25-of-56 (44.6 percent) from the field and a blistering 6-for-11 (54.5 percent) from the three-point arc while limiting the Pioneers to just 20-for-58 (34.5 percent) shooting and 5-of-15 (33.3 percent) from three.
Clay led four Hounds in double-figures with 17 points on 7-of-10 from the field to go with five boards. Cox was solid both offensively and defensively in the win, scoring 14 points on 4-of-6 shooting and 6-of-7 from the free throw line while recording a team-high three assists and a career-high five steals.
Mehlbrech added 11 off the bench on 4-for-5 shooting and 2-for-3 from the arc while Lewis chipped in her fifth double-double on the season with 10 points and a team-leading 10 rebounds. Rowe also provided a strong spark off the bench with nine points on 3-of-4 shooting from the three-point arc.
The Hounds reached several big milestones during the 2018-19 regular season, which included finishing with the best home record in program history at 12-1. By also recording 14 conference wins, the Hounds finished with the second-most LSC win in ENMU history, finishing only behind the 2016-17 squad that went 16-4 and won the LSC Championship.
Eastern will now turn its attention toward post-season play as the Hounds will play the fifth-seeded Texas A&M-Commerce on Friday, March at 7:30 p.m. in the quarterfinal round of the Lone Star Conference Tournament at the Comerica Center in Frisco, Texas.