On “Salute the Saints” day in The Den, the Lady Wolfpack gave a complete effort worthy of a championship team.
In a game that was never close, Plaisance’s dominated conference foe Tougaloo 79-66.
Loyola came out firing in the first half, scoring 42 points and were paced the entire game by mass communication senior Kiely Schork, who made six three-pointers and 20 points.
Once again, the Smith twins (psychology sophomores) were dominant against the Lady Bulldogs. Trenese Smith had a team-high 25 points and sister Trenell had a team-high seven assists. With the win, Loyola moves to 10-8 and more importantly 4-2 in GCAC conference play.
Their conference record puts them in a tie for second, and if the conference were to start today, they would be the No. 2 seed by virtue of their double-overtime win over Mobile earlier in the season. Coach Dobee Plainsance was proud of her team’s effort after the first few games of conference play. “These teams that we’re having comfortable wins over is a really strong testament to the will of these women. These are very good teams, very prepared, very athletic and they have some size on us.” Loyola started early to get to a 10-point lead at 14-4. Tougaloo closed the gap to three at 15-12 before three straight three-pointers by Trenell Smith, Schork, Tranese Smith, and the old-fashioned three-point play by criminal justice graduate Dani Holland expanded the lead to 16. And they wouldn’t relinquish.
Coach Plainsance said,” We run a lot of motion sets to create mismatches and utilize all of our weapons – excellent 3-point shooters as well as good post player. And then we have utilize players like a Trenese (Smith), who we can have shoot 3’s and then have her post up.”
Loyola is making a strong bid to win the conference right now, winning four of its last five with the only loss in overtime to league-leading Xavier on Xavier’s floor.
A large part of that is due to a three-game home-stand which Coach Plaisance credits this to gaining momentum going into the homestretch.
“We’re trying to take advantage of this home-stand. We have four games in a row at home and we feel we are capable of having a good run here that will give us good momentum once we do start getting on the road.” Loyola takes on Belhaven College next on Monday night at 5:30 p.m.
