ASHEVILLE, N.C. ? The UNC Asheville women's basketball team will begin a three-game road trip at Big South leading Liberty on Saturday afternoon. The game begins at 4 p.m. at the Vines Center and can be heard live on ESPN radio 970/1310 WISE. It can also be seen online at bigsouthsports.com for a small fee.
The Bulldogs have dropped three-straight games after falling to Winthrop at home on Wednesday night. Ashton Barton who is fourth in the Big South in scoring is averaging 13.4 points per game to lead the Dogs. She scored 17 points against the Eagles and has been in double-figures in 16 of 22 games this season.
Stacy Shepard continues to lead the league in rebounding at 9.9 boards per game. Shepard pulled down a career-high 17 boards against Winthrop on Wednesday. She has 10 double-figure rebounding games this season. Prior to this year, her season-high was 180 rebounds during her junior season. This season, she has 218 rebounds and is fifth on Asheville's all-time rebounding list.
“Our seniors have done a great job leading us through a difficult period,” said head coach Betsy Blose. “Liberty has been the team to beat in our conference for the past decade and this may be the best team they have had. It will be quite a challenge but we are going to play hard for 40 minutes and try to grind out a win.”
The Flames have won nine straight games and are undefeated in Big South play. Liberty is outscoring conference opponents by 22.6 points per game and no Big South opponent has scored more than 57 points against the Flames. Preseason Player of the Year Megan Frazee leads the conference in scoring at 17.9 points per game and is second in rebounding at 9.0 boards per game. Liberty leads the Big South in 10 of the 16 categories the conference keeps including scoring, rebounding, and assists.
Liberty leads the all-time series 34-7, but UNC Asheville won the last meeting between the two schools 54-51 at the Vines Center on Feb. 24, of last season ending a 24-game losing streak to the Flames. It was the Dogs first victory in Lynchburg since 1990 and the first overall since 1997.
