In its final tune up before beginning Gulf South Conference play the Lee women's basketball rolled to an 80-32 victory over Fisk University on Tuesday evening inside Walker Arena.
After leading by just six at the end of the first period the Lady Flames fired out of the gate on a sizzling 25-0 run to start the second period. Lee would head into halftime with a 45-17 lead and never look back.
Freshman Abby Bertram helped lead the Lady Flames to the blowout victory with a career-high 18 points to go along with five assists and four rebounds.
Veteran juniors Erin Walsh and Carrie Cheeks delivered solid performances as Walsh lead all scorers with 20 points and grabbed eight rebounds while Cheeks added 19 points and a career-high 17 rebounds.
"Abby played really well and she's got to step up with Maddie Long going down the ACL injury (suffered in practice last week). She's going to have to play a lot this season and she is going to have to learn on the fly," said head coach Marty Rowe. "She was much more aggressive tonight and had five assists but she probably should have had 10 we just missed some open looks. Defensively we saw her length start to take over and it was really encouraging to see her and Lindsey (Roddy) combine for nine assists and just one turnover.
"Obviously, when you look at the stats Erin and Carrie played great tonight and we are going to need those types of efforts out of them each and every night."
Fisk was paced by 13 points from Lashae Brown as she connected on three triples in the contest. Lametria Dunn chipped in seven points and five rebounds while Nailah Whitlock followed with seven points of her own and four boards.
Lee used its muscle down low holding a commanding 34-6 advantage on points in the paint and a 57-24 edge on the glass.
The swarming Lady Flames defense made life difficult for the Lady Bulldogs forcing 18 turnovers while blocking seven shots. For the contest Lee limited Fisk to just 17.9 percent shooting from the field.
Rowe's club dished off 20 assists and shot 45.9 percent from the field while canning 10 shots from beyond the arc.
The Lady Flames (4-1) will now turn their attention to the GSC as they open league play with a visit from rival Shorter University on Saturday evening at 5 p.m.
"We are looking forward to getting into conference play now. Shorter is going to be well prepared for us. They know us and we know them so it's going to be a great challenge come Saturday," noted Rowe. "We are glad we get to open up conference at home and we have this stretch of six home games and we need to take advantage of that, not get ahead of ourselves and get better each time out. Hopefully we can get off to a good start on Saturday."