Women’s basketball picked up their first road win of the season in dominant fashion thanks to an 83-62 victory over reigning MEAC champions Howard on Monday night.
“I thought it was a total team effort.” GW head coach Caroline McCombs said. “We got to win with a lot of players. It’s great to continue to work on our rotations. We’re still finding out a lot about ourselves and I think putting together four quarters of basketball was really important.”
Freshman guard Nya Robertson had a breakout game for the Buff & Blue (2-1) with 27 points, four assists and two steals on 11-17 shooting. The Bison (1-2) were led by graduate student guard Aziah Hudson with 24 points, nine of which came from the free throw line.
The 83 points for GW is the most they have scored under McCombs (the highest they got to last year was 65 points). The team finished the game shooting 51.6% from the floor, showing how much they’ve improved offensively since last year.
“We feel we’re getting a higher [percentage] shot.” McCombs said when comparing this year’s offense to last season’s. “An inside out three, a higher percentage three, so focusing on our offense and how we’re hitting the threes that we’re taking is something that we’ve really focused on as well.”
Much of this improvement comes down to the play of newcomers, especially those in the backcourt. Graduate student guard Mia Lakstigala started off strong, scoring GW’s first five points. Although she quieted down as the game went on, she finished with 11 points, three rebounds and an assist on 4-8 shooting. Another newcomer who excelled was junior guard Asjah Inniss, finishing with 10 points on 5-6 shooting from two point range.
Redshirt senior forward Mayowa Taiwo once again had a brilliant game for GW, getting involved offensively and giving the Bison fits on the other end of the floor. Taiwo finished with seven points and a whooping 14 rebounds to go with three assists and two steals. Although we haven’t seen the same degree of offensive involvement from Taiwo thus far this season, she is showing why she was named to the preseason all-defensive and all-conference third team.
After a strong first half that saw GW leading 43-28 at halftime, the Bison came out on a 8-0 run to start the second half. That run, of course, was broken by a Robertson three pointer as the shot clock was expiring.
Early on Howard looked to go at Robertson defensively, getting her to switch into bad matchups and shooting over the 5’7 native of Fort Worth, Texas whenever they could. However, Robertson held strong defensively and showed flashes of her offensive talent.
Then in the second half, Robertson truly broke onto the college basketball scene. She scored 13 of the team’s 19 points in the third quarter and 17 of her 27 points came in the second half. Whether it was a long three or a stop and pop after blowing by her defender, Robertson could not be stopped at any level. But the highlight of the night actually came in the second quarter when she picked off a Howard pass, took it to the hoop and finished through contact to make it 35-23 GW.
(Like… come on…)
One of the main things that stuck out about Robertson was her speed. She was leaving her defenders in the dust, opening up the offense for herself and her teammates. Even crazier was the fact that her shot selection can be poor and sometimes she holds onto the ball too long (she is only three games into her college career after all). The potential was very much on display and she very well could be a star for years to come with more experience and coaching at the college level. With that said, it will be interesting to see how she reacts to more defensive attention that is inevitably coming after a performance like this. The strategy from McCombs thus far has been to ease her in and let her loose once she gets hot. It has been working and I doubt they’ll go away from it.
“Obviously, it was a breakout game for her.” McCombs said. “I just wanted her to stay the course. It was fun, she was definitely enjoying the moment, she made big plays.”
“She came in and looked a little nervous at the outset.” McCombs said. “But I think as the game progresses, and that’s usually how it is for her — just getting into the flow of a college basketball game — but she was definitely finding some rhythm shots. Found that rhythm, created some plays defensively that led to offense, as well, which we like.”
I would be remiss not to mention the foul trouble that GW was in for much of the game, although they were leading by enough throughout the second half for it not to matter. The referees had a very quick whistle and it led to GW finishing with one player fouling out, another one with four fouls, and another three with three fouls.
On the other side of the ball, GW did well drawing offensive fouls from Howard and forcing turnovers. The Bison finished with 20 turnovers as we saw flashes of the defensive prowess that was evident last season when GW let up an average of 52.6 points per game.
GW managed to buck a trend that was developing for them early in the season: running out of gas after the third quarter. The team was outscored by a combined score of 57-27 in the fourth quarter in their first two games of the year but managed a 21-18 advantage against Howard.
Something the team has been unable to effectively do this season is get to the free throw line. Including Monday night’s game, GW has attempted 24 free throws to their opponents 58. That could be due to their more jumper-oriented offense this season (40.2% of their shots have been from three, 29th highest in the country) or a lack of aggressiveness going to the basket. Alternatively, it could just be coincidence or bad luck.
“We definitely need to play more home games.” McCombs said with a chuckle. “Besides that, it is a priority for us to get it to the paint, to get to the rim, to play inside out. So we want to attack more. That’s definitely going to be a priority and a focus no matter if we’re at home or on the road. But yeah, we recognize that we have to do a better job of getting to the free throw line. So that is something that is really important to us.”
On the injury front for GW, sophomore forward Maxine Engel, senior guard Sheslanie Laureano, and freshman forward Caia Loving were all in attendance but not in uniform. McCombs said all three players are “day-to-day” and didn’t give an expected return date for any of them. It is unclear when they will be back, but I have heard rumblings that Laureano’s injury is longer term than Engel’s and Loving’s.
GW will look to make it three games unbeaten with another trip across DC, this time to American at 7 PM on Thursday. The Eagles only game this season was a 96-45 walloping of a loss at DePaul last Monday. The game can be streamed on ESPN+ or WRGW.
Leave a Reply