Lady Toppers Ride Big Fourth Quarter Past Marshall, 86-66

Sunday, January 21

Huntington, W. Va.

12 P.M. CT

Western Kentucky University

-145, 51 CUSA

Marshall

-612, 05 CUSA

Western Kentucky

Marshall

1/21/2018 2:41:00 PM | Women's Basketball

Box Score Box Score (PDF)Postgame Notes (PDF)

HUNTINGTON, W. Va. – C-USA Player of the Year candidate Tashia Brown turned in one of her strongest performances of the season with a season-high 33 points and was one of four Lady Toppers in double figures as WKU earned an 86-66 victory inside the Cam Henderson Center against Marshall on Sunday afternoon.

Brown finished 10-of-19 from the field and was a near-perfect 12-of-13 from the free throw line for the Lady Toppers (14-5, 5-1 C-USA), who picked up their first road win against a C-USA opponent this season. The senior also moved into 10th place on WKU's all-time scoring list with the 33-point outburst, passing Lady Topper legend Clemette Haskins with the strong performance.

Leading by 10 points entering the fourth quarter, WKU outscored Marshall 29-19 over the final 10 minutes of play. As a team, WKU shot 50 percent (31-of-62) on the afternoon and was 9-of-25 (36.0 percent) from beyond the arc while going 15-of-17 (88.2 percent) from the charity stripe.

Raneem Elgedawy fell just shy of a double-double with 15 points and nine rebounds while going 7-for-8 from the field, Ivy Brown notched her 10th double-double of the season behind 13 points and 10 rebounds and Dee Givens finished with 14 points on the afternoon, 11 of which came in the fourth quarter.

Shayna Gore led Marshall (6-12, 0-5 C-USA) with 22 points and Talequia Hamilton finished with 21 points for the Thundering Herd.

WKU came out firing over the first two and a half minutes, hitting its first four shots of the day, including three consecutive three-pointers from Ivy Brown and Tashia Brown. The latter's pullup jumper at the 7:38 mark left the Lady Toppers with an early 11-0 lead and forced the Thundering Herd to call an early timeout facing a double-digit deficit.

The Lady Toppers' lead grew to as many as 13 points by the midway point of the first frame, but Marshall battled its way back into the game with an 8-0 run over the next four minutes. Hamilton converted all four of her free throw attempts during the run, and Logan Fraley's jumper with 1:33 on the clock pulled Marshall within five points, 19-14.

Following that run, WKU tallied nine of the next 11 points to rebuild its double-digit lead early in the second quarter. Ivy Brown's third three-pointer of the afternoon capped the run with 7:50 to go before the halftime break and put the Lady Toppers up 28-16.

Marshall cut the deficit to as few as seven points, but WKU managed to maintain its edge, going into the locker room with a 38-30 advantage.

Over a 90-second span in the latter half of the third quarter, Marshall tallied five straight points to cut WKU's advantage to just four points, 49-45. Taylor Pearson netted the first four points for the Thundering Herd, and Hamilton split a pair of free throws with 2:12 left in the frame to bring Marshall within four points.

That four-point gap would be the closest that the Thundering Herd would get, however. Stretching into the fourth quarter, WKU scored 14 of the game's next 16 points and expanded the lead to 20 points after Givens' triple with 6:29 to play.

While Marshall closed within 20 points two more times, the Lady Toppers held off the Thundering Herd with strong shooting down the stretch, knocking down 70.6 percent (12-of-17) of their shots in the final quarter to claim the 86-66 win.

With the first game of its three-game road stretch in the books, WKU will be back in action next Friday evening in Denton, Texas, as the Lady Toppers battle North Texas at 7 p.m. WKU will then travel to Ruston, La., to take on Louisiana Tech on Sunday at 2 p.m. to close out the road trip. The Lady Toppers met both the Mean Green and Lady Techsters in the 2017 C-USA Tournament, defeating North Texas in the quarterfinals (78-51) and Louisiana Tech in the semifinals (77-53) en route to the championship.