FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas’ women’s basketball team should head off to its Thanksgiving in El Paso, Texas, with a spring in its step.
The Razorbacks beat Tennessee State 71-50 in front of 496 fans Tuesday at Walton Arena. Arkansas (5-0) completed its season-opening five-game homestand undefeated and leave Thursday to play in Texas-El Paso’s holiday tournament with a chance to get halfway to last year’s victory total before the end of November.
“It feels good to be 5-0,” Arkansas Coach Tom Collen said. “I felt this team was good enough to be 5-0, should have been 5-0. We wanted to get off to a good start. The confidence level is growing. I want to be borderline cocky, to be honest.”
Arkansas was coming off its most impressive victory, a 77-50 victory against Middle Tennessee on Sunday, and started strongly against the Lady Tigers (2-3). The Razorbacks scored the game’s first eight points and led 18-2 with 13:46 left in the first half.
The Lady Tigers recovered but never mounted enough of a rally to cut the deficit to less than 10 points the rest of the game.
Unlike the Razorbacks’ previous four victories, Arkansas’ inside game powered the comfortable victory. Starting guards C’eira Ricketts and Lyndsay Harris, who average nearly 31 points per game between them, combined to score 14 against the Lady Tigers.
Forwards Ashley Daniels and Sarah Watkins more than picked up the slack. Watkins, a sophomore, had one of her best games as a Razorback, scoring 17 points on 7-of-11 shooting and adding 7 rebounds and 3 blocks.
Daniels added 12 points and a game-high 11 rebounds.
“If the guards feel confident in us, it’s easier for them to pass it in,” Watkins said. “It’s a no-brainer to pass it more.
“It’s important that everybody can be counted on to be a scorer and pick it up when they need to pick it up.”
Tennessee State interim Coach Rasheeda Love said the Lady Tigers focused on stopping Ricketts and Harris and were surprised by how well the Razorbacks’ inside players played.
“We really focused on stopping 22 and 33,” Love said. “They are their two go-to players. The big kids stepped up big time.”
Arkansas seized control of the game early, scoring the first eight points on the game. Harris made two three pointers to highlight the run but would attempt, and miss, three more shots the rest of the night as she finished with six points.
While Ricketts and Harris weren’t scoring, they were content to help their teammates. The two guards had seven assists and one turnover, although neither played more than 17 minutes as Collen wanted to rest them as much as he could after the Razorbacks’ heavy early schedule.
Collen said the Razorbacks always want to get inside production and Tuesday’s victory was the first game it has shown up. Watkins scored six of Arkansas’ first 12 points - Harris had the other six - and that helped her get into a scoring rhythm.
“They haven’t gotten off to a great start,” Collen said of Daniels and Watkins. “We’ve wanted to go inside every game. We want to go there all the time.”
The Lady Tigers made their first shot on Kimberly Haynes’ three-pointer with 13:14 left in the first half. Tennessee State made just one of its first 13 shots but eventually cut Arkansas’ lead to 20-10 midway through the half.
Arkansas would extend its lead to 15 points five more times in the first half before taking a 35-22 halftime lead.
Tennessee State’s Jasmin Shuler made a three-pointer early in the second half to cut Arkansas’ led to 35-25, but the Razorbacks soon reestablished their dominance. Arkansas led by as many as 30 points before the Lady Tigers’ late 11-2 surge cut the final margin to 21.
Sports, Pages 24 on 11/24/2010