RIVERTON, WY – The Laramie County Community College women's basketball team rallied from a slow start in their road trip to Central Wyoming College and held off a second half charge to win their first Region IX North game of the season 83-78 on Friday night.
The opening quarter was anything but seamless for the Golden Eagles, falling behind 12-4 in the first four and a half minutes thanks to six turnovers. LCCC answered back with an 8-0 run of their own paced by Lylah Spring to tie the game at 12 with 2:51 to go in the first.
"Coming on the road is always difficult in the first quarter," Head Coach Ayana McWilliams said. "At the end of the day, they responded well to the slow start and the run that Central Wyoming made. Every little bit of adversity, we responded to the right way."
The run continued through the rest of the frame giving LCCC an 18-12 lead into the second quarter.
Central Wyoming wouldn't find a way to stop the run until it grew to 19-0 and LCCC had a 23-12 advantage. The Rustlers trimmed it all the way back to 23-20 but the game of runs continued with the Golden Eagles answering the 8-0 run with a 6-0 run and pushed the lead to 29-23 at the media timeout.
The Golden Eagles closed the first half on a 10-0 run to head into the locker rooms with a massive lead, up 43-24, thanks in part to a first half double-double from Lylah Spring.
CWC began the second half by closing the gap to 48-35 in the first five minutes of the third quarter as the offense cooled for the Golden Eagles with the offense taking more threes in the third quarter than they had in the entire first half.
The third quarter ended with the Rustlers outscoring the Golden Eagles 19-7 and trimming the lead to 50-43 for the final ten minutes.
Both offenses picked back up in the fourth quarter, but LCCC pushed the lead to 60-50 in the first three minutes. A few minutes later, the Rustlers hit back-to-back threes to close the gap to four going into the media timeout as CWC refused to back down.
A pair of baskets in a row by Marcella Pinedo-Saavedra were backed up by four straight free throws by Spring after a foul and a technical on CWC to build and keep the lead at eight with two minutes to go.
The Golden Eagles survived several threes by the Rustlers and made their free throws at the end of the game to clinch the win 83-78 and move to 1-2 in conference play and 8-11 on the season overall.
The two sides combined for 68 points in the quarter, with 33 coming from LCCC, and McWilliams said that is something you rarely see in a college game at any level, but she had told her team to be ready for it in the halftime lockerroom.
"We knew a run was coming and down the stretch they made a pretty good run but that is what happens when you are shooting at home," she said.
Four LCCC players finished with double figures led by a career-high 21 points from Kelly Megown who made four threes in the game including a clutch three early in the fourth quarter.
"We knew it was going to be a zone, so it was very important for Kelly to keep the momentum and take the shots but in that second half she also had a couple of drives that got her to the basket some and it was important for her to remain confident," McWilliams said.
Spring finished with 20, Blanche Toualeu with another 17 and Pinedo-Saavedra added 10. LCCC as a team had one of their best nights from the free throw line, making 24 of 30 from the stripe including Spring going 12 of 12.
Spring was two blocks shy of a triple double, finishing with 17 rebounds and eight blocks, which marks the third time this season she finished a game with eight blocks. Toualeu also picked up seven assists in the game and the team combined for 18 assists as a group.
They will move on to play Northwest College at 4:00 pm on Saturday afternoon to wrap up their weekend road trip against the Trappers.