Nothing makes establishing a defense harder than a team with many weapons.
And Wednesday, inside the Steve Lacy Fieldhouse, the Milligan women’s basketball squad was a handful as five Lady Buffs hit double-digit scoring during their 97-81 win over Allen University in an Appalachian Athletic Conference contest.
“When you can get points from that many people, it makes it hard for them to adjust,” said Milligan head coach Rich Aubrey. “I know they were trying to stop Sarah (Robinson), but then that created opportunities for other people. Then once other people scored, they had to play us straight up. Sarah is especially hard to guard straight up.”
On top of the scoring totem pole was sophomore Sarah Robinson, who had a huge game with 21 points, 12 rebounds, and six assists. When Robinson wasn’t scoring, she was making clean passes to open teammates who in turn made good on the assists.
“She did a great job,” said Aubrey. “When they came at her hard, she did a really great job of finding people open and getting us some easy baskets.”
For Milligan, Lindsee Price picked up 20 points, while teammates Kelly Barnett, Hayley Wyrick, and Courtney Wilson had 16, 15, and 12 points, respectively. Price was dangerous from outside as she shot 4-of-7 from the 3-point arc.
Defensively, the Lady Buffaloes had eight steals and picked up 20 points off of turnovers. Price had three steals, and Robinson had two.
Coming out of the first frame, Milligan held a 24-17 edge over Allen University.
At the top of the second quarter, Milligan conducted a 7-2 run with Lady Buffaloes Cassidy Anderson popping a three to give her team a 10-point lead. Milligan consistently stayed ten points out in front of AU, before a 3-pointer from Price gave Milligan a 13-point gap with 4:18 left in the half. In the final two minutes of the second quarter, the Yellow Jackets went on a 5-point run to cut Milligan’s lead to just three points, before a free throw from Lady Buffaloes Kelly Barnett sent the teams to the locker rooms with Milligan holding a 50-46 lead.
An inside two-pointer from Allen University’s Kamya Thomas would give the Yellow Jackets a one-point lead, 53-52, early in the third quarter. Milligan quickly regained the lead before the teams worked out to a 58-58 tie. From that point, the Lady Buffaloes put up 10-straight points to jump ahead 68-58. Milligan’s rally saw Robinson come alive as she posted five points in the run while picking up a steal and two assists, one of which was an over-the-shoulder no-looker to Price that caught Allen defenders off guard. At the close of three, Milligan led 68-60.
“They had cut it close at halftime, and I knew that we needed to pick it up,” Robinson said about Milligan’s third-quarter drive. “I wanted to do whatever I could to help us out.”
A bucket by Hayley Wyrick gave Milligan a 14-point lead in the fourth quarter before Price popped another trey to push that lead on out to 15 points later on. The Yellow Jackets would only get within seven points in the final period before the Lady Buffaloes pulled away for a 16-point win.
With the victory, the Lady Buffaloes moved to 15-4 in the Appalachian Athletic Conference, while AU dropped to 7-12. Milligan sits in second in the AAC and is just one game out from Reinhardt (15-3 AAC).
Milligan is in its final stretch of the regular season and will travel to Point University after which the Lady Buffaloes will only have two games left before they take to the court in the AAC tournament on Feb. 22-25.
“We are trying to get better,” Aubrey said. “We talked about this at practice the other day. Obviously, we want to take care of business and win games, but we want to get better in the process. The goal is to always peak at tournament time. We want to keep an upward trend going.”