JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. --- The UTC women’s basketball team posted its sixth straight win defeating East Tennessee State 70-61 Saturday afternoon at the ETSU/MSHA Athletics Center. Chattanooga improves to 10-3 on the year while the Buccaneers fall to 3-7 overall.
Senior Ashlen Dewart (Spartanburg, S.C.) led three UTC players in double figures with a team-high 16 points, adding six rebounds, two steals and one block in 22 minutes.
Freshman Chelsey Shumpert (Paducah, Ky.) was 3-of-3 from the field with a 3-pointer and was 3-of-3 from the free throw line while sophomore Tatianna Jackson (Atlanta, Ga.) was 4-of-6 with 10 points and five rebounds, four offensive.
The game started off slow with ETSU missing a pair of 3-pointers and both free throw attempts before Chattanooga’s Taylor Hall (New Tazewell, Tenn.) sank a pair of shots from the charity stripe. The Buccaneers got the next five points to take the lead and would only lead once more in the game.
With 8:49 to play in the first half, junior Ka’Vonne Towns (Lilburn, Ga.) drained a 3-pointer from the right side to tie it up 18-18 to start an 11-2 run that was capped off by a three-point play by Dewart to make it 26-20 at the 4:55 mark of the first half. At the half, UTC led 32-26 at the break.
In the second half, Chattanooga was 12-of-21 (57.1%) from the field and 13-of-16 from the free throw line.
UTC started off the second half on a 7-2 run to move the lead up to 39-28 with18:05 to play. ETSU cut the lead back to 39-31 two minutes later and that was as close as it would get the rest of the way. Chattanooga’s largest lead of the game, 61-45, came with 5:12 to play on a 3-pointer from Hall.
East Tennessee State’s Serena Clark, Maria Bond and Cara Bowling combined for the majority of the Buccaneer offense. Bowling put up a game-high 19 points on 7-of-12 shooting while Clark had 15 points and a game-high seven boards. Bond scored 11 of her 17 points in the second half, most down the stretch.
Hall had eight points, five boards and four assists. Towns added eight points and had four rebounds, four assists and two steals. Senior Faith Dupree (Knoxville, Tenn.) had seven points and four rebounds. Chattanooga’s bench outscored ETSU 33-3.
This is the last non-conference meeting between the two teams as the Buccaneers will rejoin the Southern Conference next fall.
UTC went 6-2 on its eight-game road trip and closes out the non-conference portion of its schedule with a record of 8-3. Chattanooga, 2-0 in SoCon play, will return to the friendly confines of the McKenzie Arena Jan. 4 hosting Georgia Southern.