An eighth-straight A-SUN championship game appearance is on the horizon for the 30th-ranked and top-seeded FGCU women's basketball team (27-4) after a dominating 77-48 semifinal win over 7th-seeded Kennesaw State (9-22) on Wednesday in Alico Arena.
"I give Kennesaw a lot of credit," FGCU head coach Karl Smesko said. "They were very aggressive and played great the first 15 minutes - it was very tight. I thought a big part of the game was the end of the first half when we were able to make a run and extend the lead to double figures. The next biggest part was when we came out of halftime. We were able to extend the lead and force them to call a timeout before the end of the media. I liked our response to a tight game, and we had a number of players who played well."
With the victory, the Eagles pushed their winning streak to 18-straight, which is the fourth-longest in the nation, and they advance to host 3rd-seeded Liberty (16-15) in Sunday's 3 p.m. championship game with the winner earning the A-SUN's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. The Green and Blue are 21-2 all-time in the conference tournament and has made the title game in each year of eligibility since 2011-12. They will be looking for the program's sixth tournament title, while the Flames will be looking for back-to-back conference titles after winning the Big South last year.
Junior Nasrin Ulel scored a team-high 16 points on 7-for-12 shooting for FGCU, while redshirt junior Davion Wingate chipped in 13 points and a season-high six assists in her first start in the Green and Blue.
Redshirt sophomore Kerstie Phills finished just one shy of her season-high with 12 points off the bench, while junior Tytionia Adderly had eight points, a game-high 13 rebounds (10 offensive) and four assists.
In all, seven players had at least eight points for the Eagles, who also got nine points off the bench from redshirt sophomore Chandler Ryan on 3-for-5 shooting from long distance.
The game's first key moment came when senior Keri Jewett-Giles made the first of two 3-pointers to give FGCU an 11-10 lead with 1:55 left. Kennesaw State's Kamiyah Street had just scored two of her game-high 19 points to give her team its second lead of the opening quarter, and the long distance make gave the Eagles a lead they wouldn't relinquish.
Moments later, with FGCU having started 4-for-16 from the field, Phills finished a bucket in the paint, and Ryan followed with a 3-pointer as the Eagles took a four-point lead through one.
Street and Kennesaw State didn't back down from there as the conference's leading scorer in regular season play hit a jumper to pull her team within one (19-18) with 6:30 left in the half. From there, however, the Eagles went on a 10-0 run that included four points from Ulel and a pair of 3-pointers from Ryan and Phills.
The Green and Blue made five 3-pointers over the final six minutes and then Adderly made a buzzer-beating second-chance layup at the end of the half to push the margin to 16.
The Eagles put away any hope of a comeback by scoring nine of the first 11 points of the second half as well as 15 of the first 19 to take a 55-28 lead midway through the quarter. They led by as many as 33 on two occasions in the final quarter.
FGCU outscored Kennesaw State 19-0 in the first half alone in second-chance points en route to a 26-2 advantage overall. Defensively, they forced 22 turnovers, which led to a 25-9 advantage and the bench held a 24-8 scoring advantage.
Moving Up The Charts
With her 16-point performance, Ulel eclipsed 900 career points and sits in 10th-place in the program's Division-I era with 908 in her career. Her 467 points this year is seventh-most in a single-season in the same period, just three shy of passing Delia De La Torre (469, 2007-08) and 10 short of eclipsing Rosemarie Julien's 476 points in 2017-18. With another average game in the A-SUN final, she could surpass Kaneisha Atwater (482, 2014-15) for fourth-most. Only three players in the Division-I era have had 500 plus points in a season.
Adderly now has 825 career rebounds, which is 63 short of snatching Sarah Hansen's (887, 2010-14) career record. With her 10 boards on the offensive glass Wednesday, she now has 334 in her career, which moves her past Hansen (329, 2010-14) for the program record. Adderly's 10 offensive-rebound performance was the second of her career. She tied her career-high set at NJIT on Feb. 12 of her sophomore year.
Liberty defeated North Florida 65-51 in the other semifinal on Wednesday. The Eagles defeated the Flames twice this season, but FGCU narrowly escaped Lynchburg with a 65-64 win on Feb. 9.
Redshirt senior Destiny Washington returned to the lineup after missing the quarterfinal game due to injury. She had eight points, eight rebounds, four steals, three assists and the team's lone block. Her theft total is tied for the second-most in program history in an A-SUN tournament game.
Wingate registered her third-consecutive double-digit scoring performance, and she's now averaging 15.3 PPG over the past three contests on 15-for-29 shooting overall, including 10-for-16 from 3-point range.
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