Union ends Albany State’s season

JACKSON, Tenn. — The Albany State Lady Rams gave top-seeded Union all they could handle on their home floor Friday night in the first round of the NCAA Division II Women’s Basketball Tournament.

While ASU played one of their best games of the year offensively and matched just about every Union run with one of its own, they came up short 92-83.

Artisha Holston single-handedly picked apart Union’s interior defense and finished with a team-high 24 points and 10 rebounds. In her final game as a Lady Ram, Mecca Frost finished with 13 points and nine assists. Ieshia Young and Kyasha Wilson both tallied 11 points, while Zuri Frost rounded out the top scorers list with 10.

Albany State stayed within striking distance the entire game, never letting the lead get to more than eight points. They tied the game at 69 with 8:18 left after a 3-pointer from Wilson and then took a 71-69 lead after Keidra Green attacked the basket.

The Lady Rams were forced to play a bit more conservative on defense as five players picked up their fourth fouls in the second half.

Union reclaimed the lead with 6:50 left but only by two points. ASU had managed to draw four fouls on Union’s top scorer Amy Philamlee and their only true post player, Deanna Thompson.

Thompson eventually fouled out but Philamlee and Kelsey Risner continued their hot shooting in the second half. The two combined for 61 of Union’s 92 points.

“We really thought we done a better job on Amy [Philamlee] … Risner on the other hand was a total surprise,” head coach Robert Skinner said. “We didn’t see that coming with her. We didn’t see the 10 rebounds and 27 points coming from her. Philamlee, we knew she was going to score her points, we just thought we could shut down everybody else. We just didn’t do a very good job on Risner.”

Risner knocked down one of her seven 3-pointers in the game and gave her team a four-point lead with 5:32 left. ASU couldn’t make a last offensive push and the lead doubled with about two minutes to go. Union held on from there. Skinner said that ultimately, his team just couldn’t get the stops they needed.

“Wasn’t anything more we could’ve done offensively, we just had to do a little bit better job defensively,” he said. “They beat us because we could not stop them from scoring.”

The Lady Rams ended their season at 19-9 and with only three seniors on their roster this year, should return most of their players.