VIDEO: Campbell Penland Interview
VIDEO: Keeleigh Rogers Interview
JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – Despite not scoring for nearly the first five minutes of the game, Carson-Newman found its offense and pulled away from King to extended its season-long winning streak to four beating King 76-44 Monday at Holt Fieldhouse.
"It wasn't pretty at times," Carson-Newman coach Mike Mincey said. "I thought in the first half after they got a 5-0 lead on the defensive I thought we were pretty tenacious. We did a good job keeping our man in front and guarded ball screens the way we want to do it. Every shot attempt that they took was somewhat contested. We struggled to score and get a rhythm but got some easy layups out of the press."
The Lady Eagles scored 24 points off of turnovers and 18 on second-chance opportunities while limited the Tornado to 26 percent shooting from the field, the second-lowest mark by a C-N foe this year.
Carson-Newman (8-5) remains perfect against King (3-10) winning for the 24th time in as many tries and sixth time by double digits in the last seven overall. Each of the last nine contests played at Holt Fieldhouse have been decided by at least 10.
Campbell Penland (Sevierville, Tenn.) registered her third double-double of the year with 14 points and 13 rebounds adding four assists. As a team, the group finished with 27 assists on 33 made baskets.
"My mindset coming in was focus on the doing the little things – playing hard, getting rebounds," Penland said. "I wanted to do the dirty work that not every body wants to do and that leads to offense."
Makayla Alvey (Dandridge, Tenn.) led all scorers with 16 points making seven of nine from the field in 25 minutes adding a pair of shot blocks. Harli Smith notched her first game with at least 10 points scoring 10 with five assists.
Leading a group that scored 35 points off of the bench, Keeleigh Rogers (Knoxville, Tenn.) filled up the stat sheet with four points, eight rebounds, seven assists, three steals and two blocks. The team recorded 11 rejections and six different players notched at least one.
"I always love to score but tonight I wasn't really getting my shots to fall," Rogers said. "I knew that didn't matter and I could do a bunch more for my team. Getting rebounds, not just defensive but offensive, finding the open man and get them an easy shot. If your shots aren't falling, find something else to do and that's what I try to do most of the time if nothing is falling for me."
�� Lockdown defense
— Carson-Newman Athletics (@CN_Eagles) December 19, 2022
�� Shot swatting
�� @Malvey14 stat sheet stuffing
✅ @CNwbasketball win pic.twitter.com/h2tXskOwer
King score the first five points of the day as Carson-Newman failed to score over the first 4:28 of the game. However the Tornado failed to score over the final 8:19 of the period seeing the home group rattle off 14 straight to lead 14-5 after 10 minutes.
After the visitors cashed in the opening bucket of the second stanza, C-N used another 14-0 burst to go ahead 28-8 with 6:07 to go before halftime. The Lady Eagles matched their largest lead of the half scoring the final bucket to lead 39-17 at the break.
Mincey's crew built up a 29-point margin at 50-21 behind seven unanswered but and 8-2 King run trimmed the score to 52-29 with 2:03 to play in the third before C-N grabbed a 57-31 lead going to the fourth.
Carson-Newman put a strong flex on the final making seven of its final eight shot attempts to build a 34-point lead before settling on a 32-point spread.
Eleven King players scored in the game but none finished in double digits. It was the first time a C-N foe did that since Lincoln Memorial failed to produce one on Nov. 26, 2019 at Holt Fieldhouse, a spread of 89 days and 1,119 games.
Jaelyn West and Le'Aije Ellington each finished with a team-high eight points and Ashley Allen paced the group with nine rebounds. King finished 16-for-62 from the field shooting 26 percent as a group.
The Lady Eagles get some time off before hitting the road to begin the New Year on Jan. 3 at 2 p.m. at Belmont Abbey. Broadcast coverage airs on Mountain Talk 106.3 FM and cneagles.com/live starting at 1:45 p.m. with "The AEC Countdown to Tip-Off" courtesy of the Eagle Sports Network.
- CN -
