FMU women rout Lady Knights

FLORENCE — Another 100-point game, a school record for points in one half and a blowout victory — just another night in the non-conference life of the Francis Marion women’s basketball team.

And it could have been worse if FMU coach Heather Macy hadn’t eased off the defensive pressure at some point during the second half.

Transfer guard Shana Franks scored 30 points and Francis Marion blew past St. Andrews Presbyterian 116-37 on Wednesday in the Patriots’ home opener at Smith University Center.

In Macy’s short tenure at FMU — a season and two games — her teams have reached the century mark eight times. A year ago, the Patriots started in the second game of the season and ran off three consecutive games of scoring at least 100 points and eventually hit the mark four out of five games.

Twelve players scored for the Patriots, including six in double figures, in what was the remarkably only the fourth-largest margin of victory in school history.
The Patriots (2-0) also have won games by 94, 93 and 86 points through the years.

But for Macy and the Patriots, Wednesday was about notching another victory and improving on their performance in a 68-66 win over Barton on Saturday in the season opener.

The Patriots shot 51 percent Wednesday night — much better than the 31 percent they shot against Barton. And while 21 turnovers is a number the Patriots would love to cut down on, it’s better than the 33 they had in the season opener.

Defensively, FMU got 43 turnovers from St. Andrews and held the Lady Knights to 25.5 percent shooting.

And that energy, intensity, effort — whatever you want to call it — Macy wants to see from start to finish? Well, just say that yes, she is a typical coach in many ways. Not even a 79-point win is perfect.

“It was much improved from Saturday, but not as good as it’s going to be,” Macy said. “We did a better job of transitioning from offense to defense, and a lot of different people were able to score tonight. We played some huge, huge minutes.”

If the outcome was ever in question, it wasn’t for long.

The young Lady Knights — St. Andrews has one senior on the roster — lost the lead at 6-4, tied it at 6, lost it again at 9-6 on a 3-pointer by Franks, a junior transfer from East Carolina, and the Patriots never looked back.

“We definitely brought it tonight,” said senior guard Jennifer Dyer, who finished with 13 points and had seven steals. “The first half was really good. But not only did we start with it, we finished with it and that was really what we were looking for.”

At some point during the first half, it became obvious that there was just one question to be answered: At what point would Francis Marion hit the 100-point mark?

Having scored 71 points by halftime — a school record for points in one half — many might have figured it would happen much sooner than it did at the 5:15 mark of the second half when Shaquana Morgan made a free throw to make it 100-33.

Some coaches might question what a team gets out of a 79-point win.

Macy said she spent much of the second half trying not to look at the scoreboard and just making sure her team kept competing until the end.

“We work too hard playing just 27 games, so we like playing every single one of them,” she said. “I said early on that we’ve got kids who like to play and it doesn’t matter who they’re playing or what the score is, we just enjoy playing and competing.

“We were playing against ourselves to try to get better tonight, and with our execution and with our defense, I think we did.”

Eboni Fields scored 14 and had 10 rebounds for FMU. Robin Colbert scored 11, and Shannon Singleton-Bates and Danelle Downs each had 10.

Septembra LeSane and Brittany Roberts each scored six for St. Andrews.