Box Score
Brooklyn, N.Y. - The Long Island University women's basketball team scored the first ten points of its contest with Wagner and never let off the gas pedal as it cruised to a 72-41 win over the Seahawks on Monday evening at the Wellness Center. Coming off a tough one-point defeat on the road in its conference opener at Mount St. Mary's, LIU evened its mark at 1-1 in Northeast Conference play with the win, and improved to 6-2 overall.
Ten different Blackbirds found the scoring column, led by junior Krystal Wells with 16 points. Senior Ashley Palmer registered 14 points and a team-high seven rebounds while junior Ebony Davis joined her two teammates in double-figures with 10.
A jumper from Palmer at the 18:38 mark opened the scoring for LIU, and Davis quickly went to work off the bench as she hit a layup off a feed from senior Kiara Evans and was fouled.
The old-fashioned three-point play was followed by a more conventional trifecta from senior Marika Sprow to put the score at 8-0, and another Davis layup off another pass from Evans pushed the lead to double-digits and forced the Seahawks to call timeout.
In addition to the offensive output, Long Island came out with a stifling defense that forced three shot-clock violations in the first 10 minutes of the game. A layup from senior She'tiarra Pledger pushed the score to 20-4 with 10:48 remaining in the half.
Wagner made a run to get back into the contest behind the low-post play of Kelly Clark, who scored eight straight points to pull the visitors to within eight at 20-12 with 6:55 left. The 6-3 Clark finished with a game-high 20 points to account for nearly half of her team's scoring output.
With the lead still at eight points with 2:41 left in the half, Palmer had five points in a 7-0 run that extended the LIU cushion to 29-14 heading into halftime.
In the second half, the LIU bench would come to life as it scored 30 of the team's 43 points in the period. Wells had 13 of those points and senior MaryAnn Abrams, seeing her first action of the season due to a slew of nagging injuries, scored seven. For the game, the Blackbirds held a 41-8 advantage in bench scoring.
A jumper from the right side from freshman Letava Whippy gave the Blackbirds a 27-point advantage midway through the second half, and back-to-back layups from classmate Tiffany Patterson pushed the lead to 68-35 with 4:06 left. The hoops were the first for both in their LIU careers.
The lead would swell to as many as 35 before a pair of buckets from Wagner's Veronick Fournier accounted for the final points of the contest.
Evans set season-highs with nine assists and five steals as LIU did the same for the team totals in each category (21 assists, 15 steals).
The Blackbirds return to non-conference action as they travel to Stony Brook on Thursday, Dec. 8 for a 7:00 p.m. tilt.