HPU women trip Concord

Greer Smith, The High Point Enterprise, N.C.
·3 min read

Nov. 10—HIGH POINT — High Point University head women's basketball coach Chelsea Banbury wasn't overly happy after the shorthanded Panthers dusted Division II Concord University 71-44 for their first victory of the young season on Wednesday in the Qubein Center.

After the Mountain Lions hit an opening 3, the Panthers went on a 15-0 run. A 7-0 run at the start of the second quarter pushed the margin to 19 and the lead stayed around 20 until the Panthers went on another spurt late in the fourth quarter.

HPU (1-1) shot just under 50% for the game, but Banbury was disappointed in the Panthers lack of movement.

"I still think we have to make a lot of improvements," Banbury said. "Our offense is still pretty sloppy and we're standing. I didn't call plays on purpose because we are a lot harder to guard if the defense doesn't know what's coming. We've got a lot to clean up before Elon on Sunday. We have to make them guard movement. Teams are holding us to fewer points than they should just because we aren't moving. We have too many good offensive players to just score 71 points tonight."

She was also critical of the defense even though Concord, which is located in Athens, West Virginia, shot just 27.3% from the floor and committed 23 turnovers.

"I think we thought they're not as good, so we don't have to pressure them, rather than let's work on pressuring this team and see if we can turn them over, make them uncomfortable," Banbury said. "We could have gotten better with the defense and we just took too many plays off. We had some good spots where we had good intensity and were ready to help each other but as a whole we should have made them play our game instead of letting them do what they wanted."

Nayak Terrell led the Panthers with 15 points as all 10 players who suited up saw action and scored.

Already down four players because of injury, starting forward Claire Waytt was unavailable after hitting her head on the floor in Monday's game against Davidson. Cydney Johnson, another forward, has been sidelined for the season, and Courtney Meadows and Lalmani Simmons and Amaria McNear are also out.

Banbury shuttled players in and out trying to manage minutes with the Panthers facing three games in seven days beginning with Sunday's trip to Elon.

Shakira Baskerville played 21 minutes in the paint and scored 12 points. Jordan Edwards had nine while Skyler Curran added eight. Callie Scheier and Jenson Edwards had seven each. Seldom-used Teegan Pifher saw nine minutes of action and scored five points, which was also the total for Anna Hager, a freshman from Sweden who started in Waytt's place.

"We are going to need big minutes from the underclassmen," Banbury said. "It was nice to see (Baskerville) step up. Hopefully she continues to step up because we are going to need her.

Jazz Blankenship scored 12 points and was the only Mountain Lion with more six.