The Mustangs hit the floor with optimism Thursday evening after coming off a tough loss against Rice on the road. This game against Marshall’s Thundering Herd was a conference game and put SMU at 5-5 in C-USA and 12-11 in regular season play.
The game got off to a slow start, but there was nothing lagging with Samantha Mahnesmith who made 100 percent of ths shots she took, and finished the game with 16 total points.
“Today we got the ball to Sam in transition. For her sake, it’s been a while since she’s gotten a lot of shots so it was good to see her really on fire,” Head Coach Rhonda Rompola said.
Mahnesmith was surprised by her performance, and took the publicity modestly.
“I feel like I haven’t been making that many shots lately and tonight I was really feeling it. I was definitely aware of my shots and just tried to relax out there and keep on going,” Mahnesmith said.
The rest of the team noticed Mahnesmith’s superb accuracy and began to look for her on the floor.
“Previously Sam has been our biggest threat and teams have started to catch onto that,” Rompola said.
SMU successfully managed to go eight minutes into the game without having a single foul, which is unheard of.
“That’s a miracle, and an amazing stat for us, but I’ll tell you what we had a goal going into this. because we really have been fouling too much. We definitely accomplished that first half, but not so much in the second and especially in the last five minutes. We gave up a lot of offensive rebounds and fouls are what happen when you give those up,” Rompola said.
Marshall came off a big win prior to the game against SMU, they beat Southern Miss. at Hattiesburg, Miss., something that the Mustangs could not find this season.
“This is a very unpredictable conference, there’s really no telling and their win against Southern Miss. was a good one. You don’t konw who’s going to come in and be on their “a game,” but I feel like we did a really good job of putting a stop to their key player Tyranni Crook who averages about 17 points per game. We made her earn every poing that she had,” Rompola said.
The second half the Mustangs really took over and had a 20 point lead at one point, which gave them a chance to go pretty deep on the bench.
“It was really good to give Raven a chance wo got around 17 minutes in. She was a little hesitant at first, but second half I was proud of the performance we saw from her,” Rompola said.
The starters got a chance to have a rest for once, and this will go to SMU’s advantage for Sunday’s away game against Tulsa.
“I think that it’s a great thing because it will help us in the long run. It’s hard for some of us starters to play 30-40 minutes every game, and we all feel so comfortable playing together so nothing was really different,” Mahnesmith said.
