Roger Thomas
   Staff Writer

Last Thursday, November the UNCG Women’s Basketball team played their first game on the season. In a preseason exhibition game against NCAA Division III opponent and crosstown school, Greensboro College, Wendy Palmer’s squad was on all cylinders. The Blue and Gold won the contest with a final score of 94 to 38. The win was the largest margin of victory over the Pride since the 102 to 40 win during the 1982-83 season.

The Spartans were led by senior point guard (PG) Lucy Mason who had a game high 24 points. Mason was named to the Preseason All-Conference Team a couple of weeks ago and showed why the coaches in the conference believe she deserved the honor. Fourth year head coach Wendy Palmer spoke on how valuable Mason’s play will be to the team this season. “Lucy is seasoned. She’s been playing really well and she’s very important” Palmer said. “She’s been working really hard and I am very proud of her and the one thing that I am so proud of her is stepping up in leadership…she’s really stepped up and became the leader of this team.”

Coach Palmer started the game using a three guard, forward and center starting lineup. Bailey Williams, Lucy Mason, and Shanese Harris were the starting guards. Jade Scaife stared at forward and Mariah Wilson at center. To start the game, the Spartans came out with the mentality to pound the ball inside to Scaife and Harris to score a number of points and get easy high percentage shots. Lucy Mason had scored 17 points by end of the first quarter with a variety of inside and perimeter shooting. At the end of the first quarter the Spartans had a 15-point lead over the Pride 29 to 14.

Starting the second quarter, the team kept up the offensive tempo by attacking the basket and grabbing rebounds on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball. This resulted in the Spartans getting the Pride into foul trouble early and getting to the foul throughout the rest of the half.

Bailey Williams started to get hot from the arch in the second by knocking down her only two three pointers in the game. At the end of the first half the score was 56 to 29. Mason ended the half with 21 points and Williams ended up with 16 points at halftime.

Coach Palmer talked about what the game plan was to help the team go into halftime with that 27-point lead.

“[We wanted] to come out and attack and to work on us to make sure that we are doing the things that were focused on this year going.”

With Mason and Williams combining for 36 of the 56 points at halftime, Palmer talked about how she wanted the team to spread the scoring out among the team.

“Well it goes back to making sure they all know their importance to the team and I just want them to learn the game play, play hard, be focused, and be a good teammate.”

The score might cause someone to think that everything went the Spartans way in the contest. However, that was not the case at the start of the second half as Greensboro College started to heat up from the field led by forward Alexis Hite with 10 total points. The Pride’s rebounding on the offensive glass created problems for UNCG. In one sequence, the Pride grabbed four offensive rebounds on possession. Palmer spoke on the issues created by the Pride and talked about adjustments made after halftime.

“We had some errors that we had to work on and I’m really proud that after halftime, they adjusted and stepped up in a total team way.” At the end of the third quarter the score was 76 to 33.

The Spartans finished the game shooting over 40 percent from the field and over 46 percent from beyond the arc. Scaife, Harris, Mason, and Williams all ended the game in double figures.

The defense stepped up in a major way as well by forcing the Pride to turn the ball over 35 times using a number of different defensive sets. The Spartans season opener will be Friday November 11 at 7pm in Fleming Gym against Pfeiffer.

Specifically, Coach Palmer talked about some adjustments needed to be made before the season opener.“We need to continue to work on our rebounding, defensive rebounding, help side, deny, pressuring the ball, make sure we stay to our defensive principles, and clean up our offensive sets” Palmer said.