Boilers shake off slow start, control exhibition game
>>Print ViewPublication Date: 11/09/2009
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The Purdue women’s basketball team played a dominant second half Sunday to overpower Lindsey Wilson College.
The Boilermakers won their only exhibition game of the season 74-39.
Coach Sharon Versyp was pleased with the results against a team not usually seen on Purdue’s schedule.
“It was just nice to be able to have the opportunity to play someone else that doesn’t know exactly what we do,” Versyp said. “I thought our man-to-man pressure caused some problems. The three years I’ve been here, we’ve never played 40 minutes of man-to-man, so that was a change for people, but I thought our results were very good.”
At halftime, the Boilermakers’ lead was 38-23. But for the first nine minutes and nine seconds of the second half, Purdue outscored the opposition 21 to six.
Senior guard FahKara Malone knew it would take the team a few minutes to come together to play well.
“We started off real slow on defense,” Malone said. “We could have got in the passing lanes a lot more than we did. Once we got our groove, things started to flow a lot more and we got into the open court, which we are really good at and we needed to do more.”
Malone led the team with seven steals and four assists. She was also second in points, with 17.
The Boilermakers’ leading scorer was sophomore guard Brittany Rayburn, who tallied 21. She believes the team was able to work together to play better after the slow start.
“I think we saw each other’s strengths today, and I think we learned to play off each other,” Rayburn said. “We haven’t played with each other in a game situation. I feel like we learned a lot about each other and in general played a lot better.”
The team’s next game is against Western Illinois at 1 p.m. Nov. 15 at Mackey Arena.