Hurt’s fourth straight double-double pirated by East Carolina

Jim Swing
Assistant Sports Editor

VCU women’s basketball coach Beth Cunningham said she believes the best has yet to come for leading scorer Courtney Hurt.

Thursday night’s post-game statement might come as a bit of a surprise after Hurt posted her fourth straight double-double with a career-high 34 points and 10 rebounds, which fell one point shy of tying a school record.

“I’ve just been working hard,” Hurt said. “We’re a young team so I have more opportunities this year to get the ball and get a lot of touches and I try to utilize them the best I can.”

Unfortunately for Hurt and the Rams, the whole-hearted effort was spoiled by a total team performance from East Carolina that led to a 77-72 victory over VCU.

“We’re disappointed with the outcome,” Cunningham said. “We knew East Carolina coming in was a very experienced team, very much an up-tempo team. We were concerned about their tempo and their style of play, I thought at times we did a really good job controlling the game and the tempo but I thought we had too many lapses allowing them to get out and run transition and get too many easy baskets.”

VCU would be without full performance from second-leading scorer Jennifer Lane, who struggled after spraining her ankle in practice two days prior to game day.

In a first half that saw seven ties and seven lead changes, the Rams would be tested early by the Pirates’ resilient full-court press.

After a roundabout of back-and-forth play from both teams, East Carolina’s tough defense and fast-paced offense would help them pull away with a 41-36 lead heading into the break.

“At times we did a great job of breaking their press and handling their pressure, but then there were other times that there was too many turnovers that led to ill-advised fouls or easy baskets,” Cunningham said. “Ultimately they were able to play our style more than we were able to play our style and I think that is why we came up on the losing end.”

The Rams would come out of the break with a different mentality however, managing to produce a 5-0 run to tie the game at 41.

After several minutes of close scoring, VCU took its first lead of the game since the 6:16 mark of the first half on a tough 3-point play from freshman Jacqueline Brewer to give the Rams a 54-53 advantage.

VCU would go ahead 61-57 on a jumper by Hurt with just under eight minutes remaining in the game for what would be its last lead.

The game-plan would soon fall apart for the Rams who allowed the Pirates to thrive on a 16-3 run that gave them their largest lead of the game, 73-64, in the final minutes of the second half.

Hurt would display her shooting variety as she did all night, with a 3-pointer that brought VCU within three points of the lead score with 11 seconds remaining but that would not be enough as the Pirates prevailed.

“Defensively, we can’t give up 77 points, our goal tonight was to keep it to 62 or under,” Cunningham said. “We knew that they were a high powered offense and I feel like we gave up too many easy baskets defensively. We also have to do a better job taking care of the basketball, when we can get on our offense and execute and take care of the ball I think we are pretty efficient.”

The loss to East Carolina came in the wake of a 10-day break stemming from a Nov. 21 match against Virginia Tech, in which Cunningham said she allowed her young team to gain a competitive advantage for the season.

“I thought heading in we really needed the practice,” Cunningham said. “We went into it feeling like it was an opportunity for us to get a lot of work done and I feel like we did get a lot of work done.”

Competition has been tight for the Rams, whose first four games of the season have been decided by a combined average of four-and-a-half points, in which Cunningham believes will be helpful experience during conference play.

“Ultimately, these games that we’re playing right now are like conference games,” Cunningham said. “We know that in the conference it comes down to the little things that differentiate teams between winning and losing; there’s such a small margin for error. If we can learn from the good and the bad I think it’s really going to help our team develop and grow.”