No depth, no problem for JU Dolphins as they race past UNF 77-60 in the River City Rumble

The Jacksonville University women’s basketball team brought eight players to UNF Arena on Thursday, with seven out because of a variety of injuries, one illness and two who have left the program.

But the Dolphins also remembered to bring a strong dose of intensity, which those eight players were able to maintain for 40 minutes.

Junior guard Edyn Battle scored 19 points to lead four players in double figures and JU’s defense limited UNF to 33.3 percent shooting and made seven steals as the Dolphins routed the Ospreys 77-60 at UNF Arena in the first of two women's basketball River City Rumble games in three days.

JU (7-17, 3-8) snapped a four-game losing streak and moved into ninth place in the ASUN standings, a half-game ahead of 10th-place Bellarmine (3-9). The top 10 qualify for the ASUN tournament which begins on March 8.

UNF (8-17, 2-9) is now a half-game behind Bellarmine.

The Dolphins and Ospreys will do it again on Saturday at 2 p.m. at JU’s Swisher Gym. Thursday’s game was the make-up date for a postponement on Jan. 20 because of unspecified health concerns within the Dolphins’ program.

JU coach Special Jennings sees 'light at the end of the tunnel'

“It’s another opportunity for us to improve on the season, improve where we are in the conference,” said JU coach Special Jennings. “I make no excuses for what our record is at this point but there’s light at the end of the tunnel. We’re thinking about the game ahead of us, not what’s behind us and now we get to go home and play [UNF] again. We’re very excited.”

UNF coach Erika Lambert put it succinctly.

“They were the tougher team tonight, period,” she said.

Depth remains a challenge for JU, which beat UNF for only the second time in the last six meetings and scored the most points in a River City Rumble game since winning 80-72 on Jan. 22, 2019, at UNF Arena.

But players such as sophomore forward Zaria Blake (a career-high 13 points on 6 of 9 shooting, with five rebounds), freshman forward and Sandalwood graduate Jada Jones (seven points, eight rebounds and two blocked shots), sophomore guard Kyshonna Brown (six of her 10 points in the first 4:13 of the fourth quarter to help the Dolphins to their biggest lead, 71-49) and sophomore guard Julene Royale (who popped two 3-pointers in the second quarter, both giving the Dolphins 10-point leads) emerged to contribute against the Ospreys.

Blake had an ankle injury earlier this season and had played only 11 games before Thursday. Jones played eight minutes or less in seven of her first eight ASUN games. Brown had played in only five ASUN games and had double-digit minutes in only one of them. And Royale played 30 minutes in six ASUN games before getting 12 against UNF.

“Opportunity doesn’t wait for anyone,” Jennings said. “It’s up to them. They all did an outstanding job today. They stepped up.”

Edyn Battle, ASUN's top scorer, leads second-half effort

But so did players Jennings has been counting on all season. Battle, the ASUN’s leading scorer at 19.3 points per game, scored 11 of her points in the second half; freshman forward Saniyah Craig had 10 points and seven rebounds; and junior guard Jalisa Dunlap had 10 points.

JU’s ball movement, Battle said, was at its best this season.

“We shared the ball very well, got everyone involved,” she said.

JU held UNF scoreless for nearly 10 minutes

The key stretch was when JU, guarding the perimeter aggressively and surrounding UNF graduate forward Emma Broermann inside, held UNF scoreless for the final eight minutes of the first quarter and nearly the first two minutes of the second quarter.

“That's what they do. ... they have a really athletic group,” Lambert said. “They’re down people, we’ve played most of the year with nine scholarship kids so that’s just kind of what it looks like for two first-year coaching staffs. They have better size than we do and they just use their athleticism to just keep that intensity.”

Junior guard Kaila Rougier led UNF with 17 points and Broermann had 11 points and 12 rebounds for her second double-double in a row and fourth of the season.

Ospreys finding it difficult to hold onto a lead

UNF led the Dolphins 8-3 in the early minutes, but JU scored 15 points in a row to take the lead for good.

“Some of it was a toughness problem,” Lambert said. “When we get out to any kind of a lead early in the game we don’t know how to keep it, don’t know how to stretch it. We haven’t learned that as a team. We had a ton of offensive execution errors. We’ll watch it as a team tomorrow and try to get those things shored up for Saturday.”

Lambert pointed out that her team regressed a bit on offense and derailed the progress that had been made last week when the Ospreys beat Austin Peay 52-50 on a basket with six seconds left by Kaila Rougier and took Lipscomb to double overtime on the road before losing 94-82.

“They do a good job on defense but our offensive woes were really self-inflicted tonight,” she said. “Stuff I thought we had already fixed, weeks and months ago so I thought it was really strange that we reverted back to some of the things we already addressed.”

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Edyn Battle, Zaria Blake lead JU past North Florida in Rumble, Game 1