VIDEO: Mike Mincey Recaps Coker
HARTSVILLE, S.C. – Carson-Newman held Coker to just ten combined points in the second and third quarters to stomp the Cobras 63-44 at the DeLoach Center in the Palmetto State on Saturday afternoon.
It was the seventh consecutive road win for the team.
The Lady Eagles (15-6, 11-4 South Atlantic Conference) posted just 12 first quarter points and entered the second period down five. That's when the defensive intensity soared, limiting Coker to just three points in the entire 12-minute second quarter.
The Cobras (8-12, 5-11 South Atlantic Conference) followed that up with a seven-point performance in the third frame. C-N held Coker to a 2-for-24 shooting stretch in the two middle periods.
C-N hit 38 percent of its attempts from beyond the arc, going 13-for-34. Senior Kayla Marosites (Elizabethton, Tenn.) and freshman Braelyn Wykle (Greenville, Tenn.) both hit four shots from downtown.
Wykle finished with a game-high 22 points, five rebounds and a pair of assists.
Marosites ended up with 18 points, 9 rebounds and two helpers.
"Obviously, they're our two leading scorers for a reason," Mincey said. "They're able to get their shots and shoot a high percentage."
The team struggled with efficiency overall, shooting just over 33 percent from the field.
"It just was not our day on the offensive end," Mincey said. "I even got to the point where I told them I didn't want them going in transition trying to make stuff happen because it just seemed like nothing was going right. So, we kind of just started pulling out and running sets and it may have been the same shots we would've gotten in transition anyway but because we were running sets, our feet were set and I think that's why we started making those threes."
Junior Madison Bunch (Morristown, Tenn.) was the team's third-leading scorer with nine points, all of which came in a hot shooting stretch from downtown that saw her drain three consecutive deep balls.
"Bunch, who I had taken out for an ill-advised turnover earlier in the half came back in the game," Mincey said. "We've had that happen twice now, once with Kelci [Marosites], once with Bunch where I put them on the bench and then they came in and responded in a big way."
The team bus had some mechanical issues during the trip to South Carolina, causing a two-hour delay resulting in the team arriving at a local hotel at 1 a.m. the night before the contest.
"I thought our players really handled it well," Mincey said. "We had some good bonding time on the bus during the two hours we were sitting there. I wasn't going to look at that as an excuse. Obviously, now that we won you can sit back and say that it just kind of threw us off a little bit."
C-N had previously defeated Coker 101-71 on Dec.14 at Holt Fieldhouse. Just like this contest, Carson-Newman's two leading scorers were Wykle and Kayla Marosites who finished with 18 and 17 points, respectively. It was just one of four games this year that the team has reached the 100-point mark.
It has been a one-sided affair in the series history between the two programs as this victory moved the all-time tally to 13-2 in favor of C-N.
The Lady Eagles will next host Lenoir-Rhyne on Wednesday, Feb. 12 at 5:30 p.m. at Holt Fieldhouse. The game will air on cneagles.com/live and on the flagship station, 106.3 (WPFT-FM, Sevierville).
"Now we're going back, we know we've got L-R coming in," Mincey said. "They're one of those middle-pack teams that are very dangerous. I don't think we're going to have any carryover really."
Be sure to keep up with the Lady Eagles all season long on all of C-N's social media platforms and on cneagles.com.
