Mizzou WBB Earns Another Top-25 Win, Beats Florida 79-64
January 26, 2016 | Sports,
By: Jacob Seus
On Sunday afternoon the Missouri Tiger women’s basketball team defeated the Florida Gators 79-64, breaking its two game-losing streak. The Florida Gators had never defeated the Missouri Tigers in program history going into this one.
The Tigers started out hot taking an early 8-2 lead courtesy of the Cunningham sisters. Florida offensive power house Ronni Williams would tie things up at 15 and the two teams would go back and fourth for the rest of the first half as the two were tied nine times with only four lead changes.
It would be a very sloppy first half of basketball with 29 combined turnovers in the first half for both teams. Missouri would find themselves in early foul trouble when four-time SEC Freshman of the week Sophie Cunningham was forced to take a seat due to two early fouls. Juanita Robinson picked up the slack with six first half points; she would finish the day with 12 points and two assists in one of her better games of the season. After the first 20 minutes of basketball the two headed to the locker room knotted up at 38.
The Tigers would break away in the second have as the Gators continued their undisciplined play. Ten more second half turnovers for Florida would put Mizzou in a position to bury the Gators. Morgan Stock led the charge finding her rhythm from beyond the arc. Stock was 4-of-5 from 3-point land and would finish with 20 points on the afternoon.
The defense held down the fort holding Gator freshman Eleanna Christinaki to only six points. The Gators came into the game with the highest scoring totals in the SEC and the Tigers’ defense was able to keep them to their third-lowest scoring margin of the season. After Missouri took their lead to double digits, Sophie Cunningham would check back in late in the 4th quarter to seal the deal very much to the pleasure of the crowd of close to 6,000 fans.
The Tigers now move to 16-4 overall and 3-4 in conference play. Next up for Missouri will be the LSU Tigers, who come to Columbia on Thursday night.