By Dave Johnson
W&M Athletics
If you could throw out the third quarter Friday night, and head coach Ed Swanson would surely love to, William & Mary played Towson fairly even. But college basketball is pretty strict with that 40 minutes of play rule.
The Tigers turned a nine-point halftime lead into a 24-point advantage going into the fourth quarter and cruised to a 76-60 win at Kaplan Arena. W&M managed to get the final deficit into the teens, but that hole from the third quarter was too deep for a complete recovery.
"I thought the first five minutes of the third quarter were going to be critical, and it proved to be critical for Towson," Swanson said. "It comes down to defensive rebounding, and Towson had an answer for us every time down. They threw it up and they ran after it better than we did.
"We tried throwing everything at them. We started in zone in the second half, and boxing out is tough out of a zone. They just attacked the glass hard. We had no answer for that."
W&M (6-13, 1-7 CAA) actually outshot Towson 40% to 39%, but the Tigers had 17 more attempts. The reason for that was an 18-5 advantage on the offensive glass, 6-2 in the third quarter. Towson outscored the Tribe 46-28 in the paint.
"Towson's a tough matchup for us," Swanson said. "They've got great size, great length and terrific athletic ability. And they're ball hungry. We've just got to do a much better job of being more focused and detail oriented.
"It's tough when you're taking the ball out of your own basket because of offensive rebounding. … We're disappointed with our effort on the glass tonight. We thought we'd compete a little bit more."
Sydney Wagner led W&M with 21 points on 8-of-19 shooting, 2-of-5 from the 3-point arc. It was her third consecutive game with at least 20 points. She also had four rebounds and four assists.
In the season's first 16 games, Wagner shot 31% and averaged 11.8 points. In her last three games, she has hit 48% (27-of-56) and averaged 23.3 points.
"That's good for us down the stretch here," Swanson said. "If we can find that between Sydney and Riley (Casey), getting that scoring combination going, and continue to develop that third scorer, that will be important for us down the stretch."
Casey finished with 10 points in 28 foul-plagued minutes. Dani McTeer and Bre Bellamy had eight each.
Towson was led by James Madison transfer Rayne Tucker, who finished with 20 points on 9-of-14 shooting and six rebounds. Aleah Nelson had 15 points and was 3-of-9 from the 3-point arc.
Next for the Tribe will be a Sunday afternoon game against James Madison at Kaplan. The Dukes (10-10, 6-3) defeated W&M 67-39 on Jan. 7 in Harrisonburg. JMU is coming off a 71-56 win over Elon Friday night.
