In its second-to-last game before the start of the team’s SEC season, Alabama women’s basketball took its 12th win of the season Wednesday, defeating the Jacksonville Dolphins 99-61.
Although guard Sarah Ashlee Barker didn’t take the court tonight due to an illness, her teammates did not let the absence faze them in one of the team’s hardest-fought games of the season.
Guard Jessica Timmons delivered a standout performance, achieving a career high of 22 points in the game. Alabama scored 53 points in the first half, the season’s highest tally of first-half points.
“She is extremely talented and versatile,” head coach Kristy Curry said, referring to Timmons. “She is a big and physical, strong guard, but she just can really score the ball. … She just makes good decisions and she’s so selfless. There’s times where she’ll look to pass before she’ll look to score, and we definitely want her to look to score.”
Although the team ended the game 38 points ahead of the Dolphins, the game did not start out the same. Forward Essence Cody gained control of the jump ball to start the game, but due to two Alabama fouls, Jacksonville took two free throws and made one.
Alabama trailed Jacksonville for nearly half of the first quarter, partly due to plays from key player guard Edyn Battle, who scored 16 of the team’s 61 points, nearly twice as many as her next-highest-scoring teammate. Despite Battle’s individual performance, Jacksonville’s head coach Special Jennings acknowledged that this feat created a challenge for the team.
“Edyn Battle is a pro,” Jennings said in a halftime interview. “I think she can score on every level. She just has to understand picking her spots better, and we have to find a way, when Edyn has the ball, to get her teammates involved a little bit more.”
Thanks to a 3-pointer from guard Aaliyah Nye, the Crimson Tide was propelled back into the lead, where it would stay for the rest of the game By the end of the first quarter, four free throws from center JeAnna Cunningham putAlabama’s score at just over double that of the Dolphins, a massive improvement from less than seven minutes prior.
This game is the second-to-last matchup before the team takes on Ole Miss in its first SEC game. Curry hopes the team’s nonconference slate will continue to allow the team to develop.
“We need to take all the lessons that we’ve learned and bring those together and continue to improve as a team,” Curry said. “It’s going to be a lot harder. We understand that, but we’ve had so many experiences against really good teams and teams that will do well in their league. We’re fourth in the league right now. We’ve got to continue to build on that.”
Compared with the Crimson Tide’s performance against Louisiana-Monroe and Samford, where the team averaged a mere 30.5% field goal percentage between the two games, its game against Jacksonville showcased a turnaround of 55.2%.
The team has also seen an uptick in its performance in 3-pointers, elevating its accuracy to 50%, and free throws, boasting an 86.2% success rate against Jacksonville.
The team is now on an 11-day holiday break but will return just before the start of the new year on Dec. 31 for its final game before SEC play, against Mississippi Valley State at 2 p.m. CT.
