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Saturday, Dec. 18 6:00pm ET
Auburn shuts down Iowa with defense | |||||
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RECAP
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BOX SCORE
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) -- Auburn's double whammy of sharp shooting and sticky defense was too much for Iowa. Way too much. Conswella Sparrow scored 20 points and Auburn (No. 10 ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll, Mo. 8 AP) dominated the start of both halves in beating Iowa 91-55 Saturday, the most points allowed by the Hawkeyes in eight years. Auburn (8-1) shot 75 percent (18-for-24) in the second half and 61 percent for the game and shut down Iowa with its tough zone after the Hawkeyes (3-5) had threatened to make it a game late in the first half. "Any time you shoot 75 percent from the field, you're doing something right," Auburn coach Joe Ciampi said. "That was the game right there." Auburn, which had jumped to a 29-0 lead in its previous game, was up 21-3 this time after slightly more than seven minutes. Iowa got back in it with 3-point shooting and trailed by two with less than two minutes to play in the first half. But Auburn turned it around so quickly that with 10 minutes left in the game, the Tigers were up by 30 and coasted from there. "It comes down to how you practice," Iowa coach Angie Lee said. "This team starts practice slow. In the middle they have a really decent practice and then they start to drift off toward the end. We just didn't get into it." Auburn put up the most points against Iowa since the Hawkeyes lost to Vanderbilt 95-65 on Dec. 28, 1991. It was the Hawkeyes' worst loss in Lee's five seasons as coach, topping a 27-point loss to Georgia in her first season, 1995-96. Tiffany Krantz and Tasha Hamilton each scored 12 points for Auburn, LeCoe Willingham had 11 and Lori Nero 10. Lindsey Meder scored 13 for Iowa, all in the first half, and Cara Consuegra 11. "When you win a game the way we did tonight, it's a compliment to each of these players," Ciampi said. "We had five players play as one defensive unit for 30 minutes." Auburn's defense in the second half was directed at Meder and Consuegra, who had led the Hawkeyes' comeback from their early deficit. Meder was 0-for-3 in the second half. Consuegra, who had scored nine points in the first half, was 1-for-7 in the final 20 minutes. "It's frustrating for me. It's frustrating, I hope, for a lot of people," Consuegra said. "It's not necessarily the teams that are beating us. It's just us and I don't know what to do about it." Auburn scored on 3-pointers, layups, drives and spinning jumpers in bolting to its early lead. Hamilton had all 10 of her first-half points in that span, including a 3-pointer and a three-point play. Iowa, which missed 11 of its first 12 shots, slowed Auburn by switching from a man-to-man defense to a zone and fought its way back. The Hawkeyes made six 3-point baskets, three by Meder, and trailed 38-36 after Consuegra fed Jerica Watson for a layup with 1:38 left in the half. Auburn scored the final seven points of the half to go up 45-36 and then did a better job attacking the Iowa zone as the second half opened. The Tigers got seven baskets inside while starting the half with a 15-2 run to go up 60-38. Sparrow had seven points in that burst and the lead kept growing from there as Iowa made just three baskets in the first 11 minutes of the half. | ALSO SEE Womens College Basketball Scoreboard
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