Strong Third Quarter Boosts Reivers to 5-0

Article courtesy of the Daily Nonpareil.

No. 6 Iowa Western's offense continues to light up the scoreboard as they beat Fort Scott 100-61 on Friday evening at Reiver Arena in Council Bluffs.

"I was a little disappointed with how we started the game," Reivers coach Jillian Flores-Bennett said. "But sometimes you just have a slow start and you just have to figure out how to play yourself out of it. We tried a different lineup in the third quarter and I think that really gave us a spark. We rebounded better and got more baskets in transition."

After falling behind 10-6 early in the first quarter, the Reivers went on a 17-3 run to close out the first quarter with a 23-13 lead. Greyhounds cut the lead back down to nine points with under a minute to play in the second quarter before back-to-back threes from Hannah Burg and Aleshia Jones built the lead to 13 at the half, 49-36.

The Reivers continued to extend the lead up to 76-47 by forcing turnovers and scoring on the fastbreak. Then started the fourth quarter with an 8-0 run to pull away further and cruise to the win and improve to 5-0.

"I think the biggest thing was we were playing great defense and that turned into offense," guard Hannah Burg said. "We got the rebound and right away we're moving down the court. I think everyone knows that if we can keep getting into transition, we will, and if not we'll run something, but we did really well at creating transition baskets."

Burg was one of six Reivers who scored double digits. Burg had 12 points. Ndidiamaka Ndukwe led Iowa Western with 16 points, Aleshia Jones followed with 14 points, E'Laiyah Heard and Courtney Fields each scored 13 points, and Isabella Paradowski scored 10 points.

The Reivers have now scored 100 points or more in three of their games already and scored 99 in another. Though the season is still young, Coach Flores-Bennett loves how these girls continue to buy in.

"Our press didn't always look great tonight, but what I do like is that we tried some different actions in the halfcourt," Flores-Bennett said. "The ladies really bought into it and anytime we can have as great of a defensive effort as we do on offense, I'm happy. It was evident they bought into that by the third quarter."

Iowa Western will be back in action on Wednesday when they host NJCAA D1 North Dakota College of Science at 5 p.m.