Greyhound seniors carry team to win over Cameron

PORTALES — Senior Day proved to be a special one for five Eastern New Mexico Greyhound women's basketball players on Saturday, as the 2017-18 senior class' final home game at Greyhound Arena resulted in a 65-57 victory over Cameron.

"It's hard to put into words, it really is. These five young ladies have done amazing work for this program," ENMU coach Josh Prock said of his senior class. "Of course you can brag on each person, but the entire class has really changed the culture of this program.

"If you think about how people perceive Eastern, these five have done a tremendous job of doing that."

The five Greyhound (16-9, 12-6 Lone Star Conference) seniors - Amari Joseph, Daeshi McCants, Jasmine Hotchkins, Mikaehla Connor and Sarina Johnson, started the game for Eastern, and right out of the gate, they did not disappoint.

ENMU jumped on the Aggies (11-15, 9-9) early, taking a quick 8-2 lead. Cameron stormed back to cut the deficit to 14-13 at the end of the first period, but then the Greyhound defense kicked it into high gear.

Joseph nailed a 3 to extend the lead to four, while Cameron remained scoreless for nearly three minutes to start the quarter. A McCants layup, followed by a pair of Shelby Jones baskets, put the Hounds on a 6-0 run to end the half, as Cameron was held scoreless for the final 4:31 of the half.

As for the Aggies, they went 7-for-28 (25 percent) from the field in the half, and scored just seven second quarter points. But the bigger story was that three starters, led by Jamie Bonnarens, quickly got into foul trouble.

Bonnarens, the LSC's leading scorer entering Saturday, accrued her third foul :39 into the second period and was held to eight points on the afternoon.

"I think the first quarter was rough for us, because we had three of our starters sitting on the bench, with two or more fouls. It does definitely change our game plan a lot," Aggies coach Emma Andrews explained. "We put a little more pressure on (ENMU) and it didn't really work out that way for us. Eastern New Mexico has great size and they have great depth on the bench, too. They don't lose much when they make those subs, and everything we did, they handled."

A back-and-forth third allowed the Hounds to carry a six-point lead into the final period, and soon, they increased their lead to 11.

Cameron briefly threatened ENMU with a 7-0 run to cut it to four, as consecutive 3s from Parfitt McNair and Ava Battese made the Greyhounds a little uncomfortable for perhaps the first time all day.

In the end, however, seniors like Johnson and Connor picked up the slack down the stretch. In all, the five Eastern seniors combined for 40 of the Greyhounds' 65 points on the day.

"(The seniors) came out really hard - I was real proud of them. Defensively, we were really good early on, especially in the first half," Prock said. "We held them to 20 points, and even in the second half, it's not that disappointing. When you hold a team to 57 points, that's kind of our magic number."

With the win, ENMU moves to fourth in league play, as the Hounds will finish off their regular season on the road against Angelo State and Texas A&M-Kingsville next week before embarking on the LSC Tournament on March 1.