The Wisconsin women's basketball team was on fire Friday night at the Time Out 4 HIV/AIDS Tournament hosted by Pepperdine University drilling Mississippi 74-57.
Senior guard Jolene Anderson paced the Badgers (2-2) with 19 points along with sophomore forward Mariah Dunham and senior guard Janese Banks adding 14 and 11 points respectively.
I'm very pleased with our team's focus, our decision-making and our ability to take on a very athletic SEC team,"" head coach Lisa Stone said.
Freshman forward Lin Zastrow was just one rebound short of her first collegiate double-double, totaling 11 points and nine boards in 24 minutes of court time.
""It was a little coming-out party for Lin in a good way,"" Stone said. ""She has a lot of skill, a lot of gifts, and the more confidence she gets, the better she's going to be.
""She is a presence defensively, she's on the boards, she hit a big three, went inside, she can do a lot of different things.""
The Badgers held the Rebels (2-2) to just 18 points and 24 percent shooting in the first half.
Firestone Fieldhouse was under siege from local wildfires in the Malibu, Calif. area, cancelling Wisconsin's tournament championship matchup against Texas-Arlington. Several buildings on the Pepperdine campus act as command centers for the fires, as a result, the tournament games were canceled.
Wisconsin hosted the Wyoming Cowgirls last Tuesday in its first home game of the season. Unfortunately for the Badgers, the result of the 2007 WNIT championship rematch was just as unpleasant for the home team as the Cowgirls squeaked past Wisconsin 67-66 in overtime.
""There are a lot of things we can go back and look at through this game,"" Stone said. ""It is a heart breaker because our kids really deserved to take this one because they played really good basketball.""
Anderson once again led Wisconsin with 25 points, matched only by Wyoming guard Hanna Zavecz. The Badgers led by as many as 13 in the first half before Zavecz and the Cowgirls used several back cuts to get easy lay-ups.
The Badgers committed 21 turnovers and shot just 55 percent (6-for-11) from the free throw line.
""Those are correctable errors,"" Stone said. ""In the second half the free throws and turnovers were just unfortunate. We need to learn from this one and we need to learn quickly.""
The Badgers next head to Charlottesville, Va. to take on the Cavaliers of Virginia in the inaugural Big Ten-ACC women's challenge this Thursday. The Badgers beat Virginia last season in the WNIT quarterfinals in Madison. Game time Thursday is set for 6 p.m.
- uwbadgers.com contributed to this report.
