Kalana Greene was never a fan of the Clemson Tigers growing up in South Carolina during her formative years. Maybe that’s why she had the best scoring game of her career on Sunday afternoon.
The fifth-year senior from St. Stephen, SC led the UConn Huskies women’s basketball team with 28 points as they went on to beat the Tigers 87-48 in front of 8,735 at Gampel Pavilion to take home the WBCA Classic Championship.
UConn, who went 3-0 in the tournament, is now 6-0 on the season and has won 45 straight games dating back to the loss to Stanford in the National Semifinals in 2008. It’s the thirteenth straight in-season tournament title for the Huskies. Clemson finished the tournament at 1-2 and is now 4-3.
The Richmond Spiders ended up going 2-1 while the Hofstra Pride were 0-3 in the three day round-robin tournament at Gampel.
Greene also finished the game with a season-high 8 rebounds and 4 steals. Tina Charles had 20 points, all in the first half and added 9 rebounds. Maya Moore had 19 points, 4 rebounds, 3 assists, 5 steals and 2 blocks while Kelly Faris pulled down 7 rebounds and had a career-high 5 assists.
Caroline Doty found herself relegated to the bench for most of the second half after taking an ill-advised shot and had just 2 points in ten minutes.
Charles was named the MVP of the WBCA Classic while Moore, Greene and Tiffany Hayes were named to the All-Tournament Team. Lele Hardy of Clemson and Brittani Shells of Richmond were also named to the team.
Hardy led the Tigers with 17 points, 5 rebounds and 4 steals. Lindsay Welker, who had scored 10 points in the first six games for Clemson, had 11 points.
For the first time all season, the Huskies found themselves trailing as Welker’s layup gave the Tigers a 5-4 lead. They held lead for a total of 2 minutes and 38 seconds until Charles hit two free throws to put UConn up 10-9.
With the score at 14-11, the Huskies used an 8-0 run to push the lead to 11. They then used an 11-0 run with the score 31-21 to push the lead to 21 points and would go into the locker room with a 27 point lead at 54-27.
Amazingly enough, UConn didn’t make a three pointer in the first half. They only made two all game and Greene started the second half with one and they never looked back. It didn’t really matter though as they had 62 points in the paint.
Honestly, it wasn’t UConn’s best effort as they looked a little sluggish on the offensive end at times. Defensively though, they were once again relentless as they forced 28 Clemson turnovers that they turned into 25 points.
The Huskies return to action on Thursday night when they will host the Vermont Catamounts at 7:30 p.m. at Gampel Pavilion. The game will be broadcast locally on CPTV.
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