BUCKHANNON — The West Virginia Wesleyan Lady Bobcats’ Emma Witt posted her best performance of the season, scoring 33 points with a 12-of-27 effort and snagging nine rebounds, to lead Wesleyan over the West Liberty University Hilltoppers in overtime, 87-81.
Witt maintains a top-20 spot in the Mountain East Conference as the No. 12 in scoring with 13.5 points-per-game (243 total). Saturday in Buckhannon, she and the rest of her surging Lady Bobcat team faced the conference’s No. 3 scorer Corinne Thomas (18.7 ppg) and the No. 8 scorer Karly McCutcheon (14.8 ppg). Thomas also ranks first in the conference with a 3.5 per game three-point average and McCutcheon is fifth with 2.6 per game.
But Wesleyan has given up the second fewest points in the conference with 67.4 points-per-game, just behind Wheeling University (62.1 ppg), and the team ranks second in rebounding margin at 5.5.
So the clash was on.
The Lady Bobcats held Thomas to just 13 points and 2-of-7 from beyond three and McCutcheon had 25 points that included 4-of-7 from the deep stripe.
The conference-leading three-point Hilltopper threat was managed by an aggressive Lady Bobcat offense that shot 33-of-78 from the field for a 42.3 percent average. Sydney Baird scored 16 points with a 5-of-14 effort and Shelby Genes scored 16 points on a 7-of-14 effort.
Defensively, Courtney Wilfong pulled down seven rebounds to go along with her 14 points and the conference’s No. 5 rebounder Desiree Roy (7.5 rpg) added 10 to her season total.
Wesleyan (7-12, 4-10) travels to Concord University (12-10, 7-7) Wednesday, Feb. 14 for a 5:30 tip in Athens.
