University of North Carolina Ashville Athletics
UNC Asheville
Liberty
Liberty Downs Asheville on Senior Day
03.01.2008 | Women's Basketball
ASHEVILLE, N.C.? UNC Asheville's two seniors Ashton Barton and Stacy Shepard both finished in double figures and combined for 25 of the Bulldogs 46 points in a 60-46 loss to Liberty on Saturday at the Justice Center.
Barton scored 15 points in on 5-of-13 shooting from the floor. She hit three three-pointers and a pair of free throws as she moved into ninth place on Asheville all-time scoring list. She now has 1,109 career points passing Tonisha Jackson. Shepard scored 10 points and grabbed a team-high eight rebounds for the Bulldogs who fall to 11-17 on the season and 2-9 in the Big South.
Liberty (25-3, 10-1 Big South) clinched the Big South regular season championship on a day where its leader stepped up. Preseason Player of the Year Megan Frazee led all players with 19 points and 18 rebounds. Courtney Watkins finished with 10 points going 5-for-8 fromthe free throw line. The Flames out rebounded the Bulldogs 50-36 in the game and scored 17 second change points.
Both teams began the game cold in the first half. Liberty scored the game's first 10 points before Shepard got the Dogs on the board with a lay-up at the 15:51 mark. LU led 15-7at the 7:46 mark but then went scoreless for the next five minutes. Asheville went on an 8-0 run to tie the game at 15 with 3:24 left in the half. Egle Smigelskaite scored all six of her points in the game in a minute and a half span to put Liberty up 21-15. Frazee finished the half with a basket to make the score 23-15 at halftime.
Asheville came out of the locker room on a 8-4 run to cut the deficit to 27-23. The Dogs would get as close as four points four times, the last at 40-36 with 8:28 left to play. The Flames made a quick 8-0 run to lead 48-36 with 5:02 left to play. The Flames made 5-of-6 free throws in the final two minutes of the game to pull away at the end.
Liberty shot 38 percent from the floor and was just 1-for-15 from three-point range. Asheville shot 29.8 percent from the floor and went 5-for-21 from beyond the arc.
Asheville wraps up the regular season at Winthrop on Wednesday, March 5 in a 7 p.m. game. Liberty will have it senior day on Friday, March 7, against Radford at 7 p.m.
