College roundup: TMC women knock off previously unbeaten Wilmington, UC men cruise past AS

By Don Owen
NKyTribune reporter

A power outage early in the first half Sunday caused the women’s basketball game between Thomas More College and Wilmington College to be postponed until Monday night.

While the power inside the Connor Convocation Center was fully operational Monday night, Thomas More quickly turned the lights out on Wilmington during an 88-57 win over the previously unbeaten Quakers in the finale of the Julie Costello Classic.

Thomas More sprinted to a 24-8 lead after the opening quarter and never looked back. The Saints (4-1) opened up a 38-18 advantage at halftime as Madison Temple scored 12 of her game-high 21 points.

Temple, a junior guard from Cincinnati, also grabbed nine rebounds and dished out seven assists. She leads Thomas More in scoring at 14.0 points per game.

Shelby Rupp added 15 points and nine rebounds off the bench for Thomas More, which shot 50 percent from the field. The Saints also buried eight 3-pointers and won the rebounding battle by a 45-27 margin.

Emily Schultz joined Temple and Rupp in double figures by finishing with 10 points. McKayla Binkley led Wilmington (3-1) with 11 points.

Thomas More plays host to Thiel College at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in a Presidents’ Athletic Conference game. The Saints are 1-0 in the PAC entering Wednesday’s contest.

BEARCATS CRUSH ALABAMA STATE: It wasn’t expected to be close, and the University of Cincinnati had no problems with winless Alabama State during an 83-51 victory Monday night.

The 11th-ranked Bearcats shot 49.2 from the field and remained perfect (7-0) behind 14 points from Gary Clark and 12 points from Jacob Evans. UC built a 46-26 halftime lead and cruised to the win before a crowd of 7,012 in BB&T Arena.

Alabama State (0-7) made just 38.6 of its shots from the field and committed 20 turnovers that resulted in a 30-7 points-off-turnovers advantage for UC. The Hornets, members of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, entered Monday night having lost their previous six contests by an average margin of 29 points per game.

“We knew coming in it was going to be a tough game for us with UC being in the top 15 in the country,” Alabama State head coach Lewis Jackson said. “We wanted to come in and play tough basketball, play one possession at a time.”

UC had captured the Cayman Islands Classic last week, winning three times in three days, and head coach Mick Cronin said his team looked a bit out of sync on Monday night.

“I told the guys I thought we played like a team that hadn’t practiced much,” Cronin said. “It wasn’t for a lack of effort, though. We had 53 deflections. We just didn’t have a lot of rhythm. I think that showed in our shooting.”

Trevor Moore added 11 points for UC, which will play city-rival Xavier at noon Saturday in the Cintas Center.

Contact Don Owen at don@nkytrib.com