By Josh Sinclair

Feb. 17, 2016

The UW-Whitewater women’s basketball team began the week at fourth place in the conference and vaulted themselves into a tie for third after a couple of wins against the bottom teams in the WIAC.

The ’Hawks (19-4) began the week with a game at Kachel Gymnasium against the UW-Platteville Pioneers (5-18) on Play4Kay night.

As part of the Play4Kay game, the Warhawks collected money for donation to the American Cancer Society. Both teams wore pink T-shirts during warm-ups, and the coaching staffs from both teams wore pink to raise awareness for breast cancer.

Whitewater won handily over the Pioneers 85-58.

“We just had to play our game,” head coach Keri Carrollo said. “We have an excellent defense, we play with energy and we can’t worry about what about the score or the other team is going to do, we can beat anyone.”

With the victory, the Warhawks clinched their 17th-consecutive bid to the WIAC Tournament, which begins the week of Feb. 22. The Warhawks are currently alone in fourth place in the league standings.

UW-W had three players score in double digits. Senior guard Jaya Perkins came out firing for the Warhawks, scoring the team’s first 13 points, knocking down five of her first six shots. Here hot shooting gave the Warhawks a 13-0 edge to start the contest. Perkins added two assists and two rebounds to round out her box-score stuffing night.

“We knew the inside out game was going to be there against the 2-3 zone they were in,” Perkins said. “I got a couple of good looks to start the game and they just happened to fall.”

Also for the Warhawks, sophomore guard Brooke Trewyn tallied 14 points and grabbed a team-high nine rebounds.

Whitewater remained ahead of the Pioneers 24-11 at the end of the first quarter.

Junior guard Andrea Olson owned the second quarter scoring 11 of her 15 points in the period to give the Warhawks the 45-29 halftime lead.

The Warhawks extended its lead to more than 30 points in the second and ended up cruising to the victory.

The second game of the week for the Warhawks was as successful as the first.

The Warhawks went on the road to take on a UW-Stout (9-14)team that was coming off losing five of their last six games.

“We just worry about running our stuff when we play a team a second time,” Perkins said. “They know us and we know them; it’s just about playing our game.”

The Warhawks were led by senior forward Lisa Palmer who had a double-double in the contest including a game-high 15 points on 6-of-9 shooting from the floor, while grabbing 13 rebounds. Sophomore forward Andrea Meinert recorded 12 points off the bench for the Warhawks on 4-of-8 shooting, while corralling nine rebounds.

Sophomore guard Malia Smith contributed 11 points, while also grabbing four rebounds.

UW-Whitewater led from wire-to-wire in this contest. The Warhawks held a 28-25 edge after the first half after only shooting 38.7 percent shooting from the floor.

“Our press is what we are known for,” Carrollo said. “It wears other teams out and then we can take advantage that.”

The Warhawks opened things up a bit in the second half thanks to shooting 16-18 from the charity stripe in the second half.

Whitewater saw their largest lead of the game come at the 6:35 mark in the fourth quarter on a senior guard Abbie Reeves lay-up and a made free-throw by Smith at which the Warhawks led by 15. The Blue Devils got the game back to within single digits at one point, but could not pull all the way back.

The Warhawks will resume WIAC play at 7 p.m. on Feb. 15 at Kolf Sports Center in Oshkosh to take on the first-place Titans.