GREENSBORO-After enjoying the Thanksgiving holiday, the North Carolina A&T women's basketball team felled Siena College, 67-53, on Friday afternoon at Corbett Sports Center for their fourth straight victory.
Junior JaQuayla Berry posted her first double-double of the season, ending the game with 12 points and 10 rebounds. Sophomore Tracy King led the team with 14 points, and guards Mikala Scott and Amber Calvin both had 12 points in the contest. The Aggies had 17 steals in the game, with King totaling six.
"Well, I thought we didn't have a great start," said head coach Patricia Cage-Bibbs, who is now 10 wins away from her 500th career victory. "I didn't think we came out with the intensity. As we went on, we started picking it up and we saw the intensity."
"JaQuayla Berry, who was 1-for-8 in the first half, she came back and got a double-double," Bibbs said. "We've got to get that from the beginning with JaQuayla."
The Aggies took a 41-28 lead in the first four minutes of the second half, powered by a pair of layups by Berry, and heavy pressure on the Saints. N.C. A&T later went on a 9-0 run to take its biggest lead of the game at 54-36 with 8:43 remaining.
But the Saints made a strong run of their own, holding the Aggies without a point for five minutes to get within five at 54-49. King ended the spurt with two free throws. A steal and layup by Scott followed by another Scott layup put the Aggies back in control.
"The first five minutes of the second half is going to determine who wins the game because that team who comes out with all of the intensity is basically who is going to get it done," Bibbs said. "Siena came out with a lot too. We knew we had to really play well in order to beat this team today."
The Aggies (4-2) and Saints (1-3) had a slow start to the first half, as there were eight total missed layups in the first few minutes of play. The Aggies didn't score until the 17:51 mark, when junior center Nikia Gorham hit a layup. The two teams went back and forth for several minutes. N.C. A&T took the lead for good in the first half on a layup by Gorham, which made it 15-14 with 8:32 left. King added to that lead with a three-pointer at the 7:39 mark. The Aggies got to the line six times, and scored nine points off free throws in the last five minutes of the half to take a 35-22 halftime lead.
"I think coming back and talking to them after halftime we kind of pushed up on what we needed to do on both ends," Bibbs said. "I always tell my players a lot of times when you run your offense, sometimes defense won't give you that precise offense. So now you got to see what you need to do."
The Aggies put on a strong defensive performance, collecting 42 rebounds and 17 steals, as well as also forcing 23 Siena turnovers in the game.
"I'll tell you, defense won this game. We know it, they know it, defense won it," Bibbs said.
And so did the nearly 430 fans who attended Friday's game at Corbett Sports Center.
"I can't say enough too about the fans that came out the day after Thanksgiving," Bibbs said. "We had a nice crowd, and we want to continue to, as we say, entertain them, but my thing is we want to continue to win. I felt good today when I walked out and saw them here."
The Aggies will next play on Dec. 3, taking part in a doubleheader at N.C. Central. The women will play at 2 p.m., followed by the men's basketball team playing the Eagles at 4 p.m. It will be the first MEAC game for each team.
"We know that it's a rivalry, we know that it'll be a packed house, so we'll just have to make sure that our young kids don't get caught up in all the hoopla, because there's going to be a lot of it," Bibbs said. "We'll just have to make sure that we play solid on both ends of the floor, and I think if we do that, we'll be okay."
