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Sophomore\u00a0Haley Laughter\u00a0sank seven 3-pointers and produced a career-high 25 points to lead a well-balanced attack as the FGCU women’s basketball team defeated St. Thomas University 86-33\u00a0Tuesday\u00a0night at Alico Arena. With the win, the Eagles move to 7-3 in the nonconference season with a 2-2 record at home, while the Bobcats fall to 2-6.<\/p>\n
FGCU took control in the first quarter by holding St. Thomas scoreless for over seven minutes and increased its lead to 20 points before the break. The Eagles shot 48 percent from the field with 14 3-pointers to extend the lead to a game-high 55 points and ultimately earned a 53-point victory at home with help from points from 10 different players.<\/p>\n
“I thought we got off to a little bit of a slow start,” said head coach\u00a0Karl Smesko. “We didn’t execute very well, but I was much more pleased with the second half. It was great to see some of our players who don’t get the opportunity to play a lot make some plays for us and it was great to see the team having fun and playing well together. I give St. Thomas a lot of credit. They competed until the final minute and they created some difficult situations for us, despite the score.”<\/p>\n
Laughter\u00a0led all players with 25 points, five assists and five rebounds, while nine other players scored in the team’s fourth-straight win. The sophomore sank seven 3-pointers on nine attempts to fall just one long-range make away from the FGCU record. In her first game at Alico Arena,\u00a0Sydnei McCaskill)\u00a0scored a career-best 16 points, while freshman\u00a0Tayler Goodall rounded out the double-figure scorers with 13 points.\u00a0Taylor Gradinjan contributed eight points and a career-high 10 rebounds in just 19 minutes on the court as FGCU used its depth with 11 players seeing at least 12 minutes of action.<\/p>\n
The poised team attack resulted in a shooting success rate of 48.3 percent for the Eagles, who converted 14-of-35 3-point attempts and sank 73.7 percent of free throws. The Green and Blue held St. Thomas to a 26.5 percent clip from the floor and outrebounded the Bobcats 50-33. FGCU forced 17 St. Thomas turnovers and produced a season-high 21 assists with six steals.<\/p>\n
Laughter got the game started for FGCU with a 3-pointer from the top of the arc on the game’s opening possession. The Bobcats responded with a mid-range jumper right away but Laughter added another two points to hold onto the lead for FGCU. The Eagles started just 1-for-7 from the field but forced four STU turnovers in the opening minutes to keep control early on. Laughter hit another long-range shot midway through the first quarter to extend the lead to 10-2 and helped on the defensive end as the Eagles held the Bobcats scoreless for a span of seven minutes.<\/p>\n
STU added two points from the free-throw line in the final seconds of the first quarter and increased the speed of play as the second stanza began. McCaskill and Goodall each added 3-pointers in the opening minutes of the second quarter to excite the crowd before Goodall followed with another long-range shot and a layup for an eight-point streak on her own. Goodall’s run pushed the FGCU lead to 25-8 with six minutes remaining in the quarter.<\/p>\n
A corner three from\u00a0Stephanie Haas\u00a0and a driving layup by\u00a0Jessica Cattani\u00a0extended the FGCU advantage to 20 points with four minutes to play, where the point differential would stay until the break.<\/p>\n
The Eagles went into halftime with a 35-15 advantage after shooting 38.7 percent from the floor and holding a 23-12 gain on the boards.<\/p>\n
The second stanza opened with a well-rounded effort from the Eagles as Laughter,\u00a0Kaneisha Atwater, McCaskill,\u00a0Jaime Gluesing\u00a0and Goodall combined for 15 points in the first five minutes to move the score to 50-17 in favor of the home team. The team shot 58.8 percent in the third quarter and used a precision pass from\u00a0Bethany Murrell\u00a0to Goodall to push the score to 62-24 with a layup in the final seconds of the quarter.<\/p>\n
St. Thomas started the last quarter with back-to-back layups but a single free throw from\u00a0Katie Meador sparked an 18-point run for FGCU that spanned just four minutes. McCaskill hit two free throws before Laughter sank four-consecutive 3-pointers in just over two minutes to bring the Eagle lead to 49 points. McCaskill sank another long-range shot from the left side to give FGCU an 80-28 advantage to four minutes left to play.<\/p>\n
FGCU allowed St. Thomas to another five points in the final minute of action and ultimately took away the 86-33 point victory for the team’s largest win since the opener of the 2012-13 campaign.<\/p>\n
The Eagles will travel to San Juan, Puerto Rico\u00a0Thursday, Dec. 17\u00a0in preparation for the San Juan Classic. In the holiday tournament, the Green and Blue will take on Mississippi State, Arizona and Western Michigan in consecutive days between\u00a0Dec. 19 and 21. FGCU returns to Alico Arena after the Christmas holiday to host Quinnipiac on\u00a0Monday, Dec. 28 at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sophomore\u00a0Haley Laughter\u00a0sank seven 3-pointers and produced a career-high 25 points to lead a well-balanced attack as the FGCU women’s basketball team defeated St. Thomas University 86-33\u00a0Tuesday\u00a0night at Alico Arena. With… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[114],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38057"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}