It took a 15 minutes for the Fort Lewis College women’s basketball team to get settled in during the home opener, but when the shots started to fall, they did in bunches.
Tied at 24 halfway through the second quarter, Kylie Santos and Michelle Turner made a couple of 3-pointers each to open the flood gates. The Skyhawks (1-0) went on to outscore Westminster College (0-1) 49-22 from that point forward en route to a 73-46 blowout in the home opener as part of the Skyhawks Regional Challenge.
Santos led the Skyhawks with 13 points. Turner and Kate Bayes had nine each in the victory.
“I was happy with our energy (Friday night),” Fort Lewis head coach Jason Flores said. “We wanted to come out and throw a haymaker, but we were a bit antsy. It only took a couple shots to fall to relax the group, and we took off from there.”
Though both teams were tight from the start, Fort Lewis was able to jump out to a 6-2 lead. Made shots for both teams were hard to come by in the early going, but Griffins’ guard Natalie Parsons was the first to find a rhythm.
Parsons’ 13 first-half points had the visitors leading for the majority of the first half until the home team settled in.
Santos’ eight points in the last few minutes of the half combined with back-to-back 3-point field goals by Turner highlighted a 10-2 Skyhawks run that ended the first half with the home team leading 37-28.
“We struggled to start, but the energy stayed up, so that was nice to see,” Santos said. “Once a couple of them went in we kind of looked at each other and said ‘we can do this.’”
And they did.
Fort Lewis held on to the momentum gained at the end of the first half and opened the second half on an 15-2 run. The Skyhawks kept up the pressure on the offensive end while locking down the Griffins on defense.
Parsons, who had caused problems for Fort Lewis in the first half, was held scoreless in the second.
“We didn’t do anything specifically to stop her,” Flores said. “I think when we started making some shots on offense and getting some confidence it translated to a good effort on both ends.”
The result of the confident Skyhawks was a second half in which the home team outscored the Griffins 34-18.
“We wanted to make a statement,” Santos said. “We believe in ourselves, and we think we’re a good team. When we play like that, we’re going to be tough to beat.”
Fort Lewis will look to build off Friday’s win in a matchup with Eastern New Mexico (1-0) at 4 p.m. Saturday back inside Whalen Gymnasium. The Greyhounds defeated Adams State 80-54 on Friday in the opening game of the Skyhawks Regional Challenge.
jfries@durangoherald.com
