LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The Central Arkansas women's basketball team continued to roll, winning its fifth-straight game with another defensive showcase. The Sugar Bears dominated Bellarmine on Saturday, cruising to an 85-37 win over the shorthanded Knights.
The Sugar Bears improved to 16-10 overall and 9-5 in ASUN play with the win, moving into third place in the ASUN standings with just four games remaining on the schedule.
Jenna Cook matched her career=high with 21 points, hitting five three-pointers while adding five rebounds and four assists. Every Sugar Bear that played more than five minutes scored against the Knights, and the team had 25 assists on 32 field goals, including dimes on the first 19 makes of the game.
It didn't take long for Central Arkansas to jump out to a lead, with the Sugar Bears hitting shots to make it a quick 8-1 lead. Bellarmine hit a three-pointer to keep it close, for the moment, but a 10-0 run boosted the lead from four to 14 in just a few minutes. The Knights managed to get ten points in the opening quarter, but the Sugar Bear offense poured in 23, more than doubling the home team in the opening frame. The starting five did most of the damage early, scoring 16 of the team's points to get the game started.
Central Arkansas scored the first 22 points of the second quarter, suffocating the half-court offense of the Knights and producing buckets at will on the other side. It took nearly nine and a half minutes for Bellarmine to score its first and only basket of the second quarter, and in the meantime, the lead was pushed beyond a comeback, with Central Arkansas leading 48-12 going into halftime. The Sugar Bears shot 53 percent from the field and 50 percent from three in the second, while holding Bellarmine to just 1-for-12 in the period. And while the most recent winning streak has largely been centered around forcing turnovers and capitalizing on miscues, Central Arkansas forced just eight turnovers in the first half, scoring 11 points from those miscues.
Shot-making abandoned the Sugar Bears for a bit in the second half, with neither side scoring until after the seven-minute mark in the third period. Bellarmine hit a three to break the stalemate, cutting the lead down to 33 points. Central Arkansas answered, but the point production in the third wasn't quite up to the level that the first half was, and on the other side, Bellarmine started seeing the ball go through the hoop. After scoring 12 points in the entirety of the first half, Bellarmine more than doubled that in the third quarter alone, putting up 14 points.
Central Arkansas was more or less back to the first half in the fourth quarter, outpacing the Knights in waves as the lead grew over 40. Cook connected on a shot from beyond the arc to make it 69-29 with just over a minute gone in the fourth, and the Sugar Bears, playing entirely off the bench at this point, continued to add to the lead.
Kamryn Griffin put together a very solid second half, putting together six points, a pair of rebounds and three assists, while
Carla Ramirez hit her first three-pointer as a Sugar Bear late in the game.
When it was all said and done, the Sugar Bears' bench outscored the Knights 51-0, with the bench even outscoring Bellarmine's starters. All six players that came off the bench for the Sugar Bears shot 50 percent or better, and had 14 assists to just three turnovers.
Central Arkansas is back at home for the next one, facing Austin Peay for the first time this season on Wednesday. Tip-off in the Farris Center is set for 6:30 p.m., as the Sugar Bears play their second-to-last home game of the season.
