High Point Women’s Basketball Falls to Liberty, 65-42

• Freshman Jiselle Thomas came off the bench to score a team-high 12 points on 6-of-6 shooting from the charity stripe.
• Junior Shea Morgan led the Panthers with five rebounds to go with 10 points on the night.
• High Point had an uncharacteristic night shooting 0-of-16 from beyond the arc despite entering the contest ranked 11th in the nation in three-point percentage.

HIGH POINT, N.C. – The High Point University women’s basketball team dropped its home contest to Liberty, 65-42, on Tuesday night in the Millis Center.

The Panthers (13-7, 7-2) opened the scoring, but then surrendered a 6-0 run as the Flames (13-8, 8-1) took a lead they wouldn’t relinquish the rest of the night.

Junior Shea Morgan scored eight second-quarter points to keep the Panthers within striking distance into the second half. However, Liberty used an 11-0 spanning the middle of the third into the fourth period to build a 54-27 lead and maintained that edge from there.

“I just didn’t like too much about us tonight because I don’t think we came in with the right mentality, didn’t play very hard and did some uncharacteristic stuff,” head coach DeUnna Hendrix said. “It’s not that we can’t shoot because we can shoot the ball, but we just weren’t locked in mentally like we needed to be. Defensively, we didn’t communicate but it all comes down to our focus level wasn’t were it needed to be tonight.”

Freshman Jiselle Thomas came off the bench to score a team-high 12 points thanks to a 6-of-6 night from the charity stripe. Meanwhile, Morgan finished the night with 10 points on 5-of-8 shooting to go with five boards.

Posting their lowest scoring output of the season, the Purple & White shot 31.1 percent (14-of-45) on the night. Included in that percentage, HPU shot 0-of-16 from beyond the arc after entering the game ranked 11th in the nation in three-point percentage.

On the other end, Liberty shot 28-of-54 (51.9 percent) and won the rebounding battle 35-29. The Panthers were able to force 17 turnovers on 10 steals led by three from sophomore Camryn Brown, but were outscored 13-10 in points off turnovers.

The Panthers couldn’t get the offense going early shooting 2-of-10 in the first quarter as the Flames led 13-7 through 10 minutes. In the second frame Morgan got going hitting 4-of-6 shots in the period, but it wasn’t enough as Liberty piled up 23 points in the frame to build a 36-19 halftime lead.

After the break, Morgan opened the scoring cutting the deficit to 15 and three minutes later Harris scored to pull within 16 with 6:54 left in the third. However, the Flames responded keeping the Panthers without a field goal for the next 13 minutes while stretching their lead to 62-32.

From there, Liberty closed out the 65-42 win to claim first place in the Big South standings at the midway point of the campaign.

High Point opens its second trip around the conference on Saturday when it hosts Campbell in the Millis Center at 4:00 p.m.