SCF Sports: Raining 3s vs North Alabama Recap

Earning their second sweep in conference play, the FGCU women's basketball team (18-4, 9-0 A-SUN) remain on the unbeaten path in the A-SUN as they defeated North Alabama (16-3, 7-2 A-SUN) 76-51 at the Alico Arena Tuesday night. With the win, the Eagles are now 5-0 against the Lions and earned their second sweep of the season.

"This is a great win for us," FGCU head coach Karl Smesko said. "We feel really good about it. Both teams were sloppy early, a lot of turnovers, but we played really good defense the whole first half. We forced turnovers and limited their best scorers."

The star of the game was junior Tytionia Adderly. Adderly pulled away with a double-double that featured a career-high 29 points and 16 rebounds (seven offensive, nine defensive). Adderly also added three assists and three steals.

"Ty Adderly was outstanding tonight - just amazing," said Smesko. "These are some of the things I think she's capable of, so hopefully we can see more performances like this coming down the stretch (from her)."

With her seven offensive boards, Adderly is now at 304 and is now 22 away from passing Sarah Hansen (329, 2011-14) as the all-time leader. With the nine defensive boards, Adderly has 439. Overall, Adderly's 16 boards put her at 743 as she passed Whitney Knight (735, 2011-16) and now only trails Sarah Hansen (887, 2010-14). It was her 10th career double-double and as a result, Adderly became one of just three players in the Division-I era with 10 or more. In fact, she's just the fourth player in program history to score at least 29 points in a double-double, joining Adrianne McNally, China Dow and Kate Schrader (three times).

Of course, every time I speak to her after every game I always ask her one question that we get a kick out of: "What's with all the rebounds?"

Junior Nasrin Ulel added 21 points and redshirt senior Destiny Washington chipped in 14 points and 10 rebounds, which was her fourth double-double of the season and second against North Alabama.

FGCU opened the game with five straight points despite a sluggish start. North Alabama responded with seven of the next nine points to tie the game, but Adderly scored four points during a 7-0 run and finished with 12 points in the opening frame to give the Eagles a 20-12 lead.

Then came the turning point - the second 10 minutes. FGCU's defense held North Alabama to an 0-for-7 performance from the field in the second quarter with only four points on six free throw attempts. Meanwhile, the Green and Blue went 6-for-17 from the field, including four 3-pointers, to outscore the Lions 17-4 in the frame and take a 37-16 lead.

It was the 12th time in conference play the Green and Blue held an opponent to single digits in a quarter.

Adderly exploded, once again, in the third quarter with 13 points and five rebounds on 6-for-6 shooting. Along the way, a jumper from Washington gave FGCU its first 30-point lead with 4:07 left in the third.

However, North Alabama scored 10 of the next 13 points to close the quarter and went on a 19-5 run to trim its deficit to 16 with 6:39 left in the game. The Eagles responded with a 17-2 run that pushed the lead to as many as 31 with three minutes left.

Ulel finished 7-for-19 from the field, which ties her for the second most field goal attempts against an A-SUN opponent in program history. Six of her field goals came from 3-point range, and she's now averaging 18.6 PPG over the past five games. It was her second straight game with 20 + points and her sixth of the season.

The trio of Adderly, Ulel and Washington combined for all but 12 of FGCU's 76 points and tallied three assists apiece along with eight combined steals. Redshirt senior Lisa Zderadicka had a game-high eight assists despite scoring just two points. She is now 14 points shy of 1,000 in her NCAA career.

Defensively, FGCU forced a season-high 29 turnovers for the second time this year, and it led to 29 points going the other way. It was the fifth time the Eagles have forced 20 + turnovers in conference play.

North Alabama's Brittany Panetti, who entered the game as the A-SUN's leading scorer at 16.7 per contest, was held to a season-low two points on 1-for-5 shooting in 23 minutes. Furthermore, Emma Wallen, who entered averaging 14.6 points overall and 22 PPG over the past four, was held to five points on 2-for-10 shooting, including an 0-for-6 performance from 3-point range - one game after making a season-high eight in her team's win over Lipscomb.

Up Next:
FGCU will be back in action at Liberty on Saturday at 12 p.m.

Below are pics with me and some of the players after the game.