Jimmies women's hoops beat Midland 72-55 for Sankey's 100th win
Feb. 10—JAMESTOWN — The University of Jamestown women's basketball team got a convincing 72-55 win over Midland University on Saturday, Feb. 10, at Harold Newman Arena. The win was an extremely significant one as it served as Jimmies head coach Thad Sankey's 100th as the team's head coach.
"It's awesome," Sankey said. "I think it's so cool the way that it happens in the story of our season. The way that our team is really finding itself. The way that we had to surge and fight and battle for who we are and what identity are we building as a group. The milestones are milestones but it's cool the way that it happened in the middle of the season. Our team's doing special things and hopefully, we can keep it rolling."
Sankey's first win came on Oct. 22, 2018, when the Jimmies beat Dickinson State 88-57.
Throughout his tenure, Sankey has coached three 1,000-point scorers including Kia Tower who has 1,704 career points as of Feb. 10.
"It's been five years so we've had so many good memories," Tower said. "He's seen the best parts and the worst parts of me. He's just been super supportive of me in my career and helped me get through tough times. I'm just so grateful that I got to be coached by him."
The biggest difference in the first quarter was that the Jimmies struggled slightly less than the Warriors did as the Jimmies (15-9, 11-7) shot 6-for-17 from the field and the Warriors shot 1-for-13 from the field. The Jimmies shooting helped them take a 15-5 lead into the second quarter.
"Midland has a couple unique wrinkles in their help rotations and so for us it scrambled our decision-making," Sankey said. "We had a couple times where we made great decisions and a few times where we didn't. I thought we could've been a little bit bit more aggressive in finishing all the way to the rim. We got the ball where we wanted to, to the people we wanted to, we just weren't able to convert early, thankfully our defense was really locked in."
Between late in the first and early in the second, the Warriors (5-19, 2-16) went on an 8-0 run to cut the deficit to 15-9. The run was ended when the Jimmies' Tower hit a jumper to push the lead out to 17-9, which kickstarted a 10-7 run over the remainder of the first half to head into the break up 27-16.
The game was teetering on an edge with 5:49 to go in the third quarter as the Jimmies were only up 11, however within 20 seconds, the Jimmies' lead ballooned to 19 points as Tower got fouled and hit both at the stripe before an immediate steal from Reagan Johnson led to a Kate Cordes three to make it 39-23. After another steal, Tower hit another three to push the lead out to 42-23.
The Jimmies kept it up from there taking a 25-point lead early in the fourth quarter on their way to the convincing win.
The Jimmies return to the court at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 14, when they go to Dordt University.
MU 55, UJ 72
MU: 5 11 14 25 — 55
UJ: 15 12 25 20 — 72
Points leaders:
MU: Gabby Beauperthuy 10, Lexie Glosser 8, Emma Shepard 8, Ellie Bovaird 6
UJ: Kia Tower 16, Kate Cordes 14, Audrey Rodakowski 12
Assists leaders:
MU: Jenna Weber 2, Asia Bryant 2, Beauperthuy 1, Carly Carstens 1, KD-Anna Petersen 1
UJ: Tower 4, Kate Busek 4, Megan Oswald 2
Leading rebounders:
MU: Sarah Shepard 7, Bovaird 5, Weber 4, Rubie Klausen 4, Asia Bryant 3
UJ: Busek 8, Jailyn Martinson 6, Rodakowski 5, Hannah Hagel 5, Samantha Paulsen 4
