Jan. 13, 2011
ATLANTA, Ga. - Old Dominion scored the final nine points of the game to turn a five-point deficit into a four-point victory as the Lady Monarchs outlasted Georgia State, 66-62, Thursday evening in Atlanta.
Senior Alena Voronina posted her first career double-double with a team-high 17 points and game-high 10 rebounds. The Lady Monarchs (10-5, 4-0 CAA) shot 46.9 percent from the field and a season-best 53.8 percent from beyond the arc.
"The last four minutes of the game we played together and we played hard," said Old Dominion head coach Wendy Larry. "If we had played that way the entire game, the results could have been much different. Russia played a tremendous role in the result of the game, especially in the last four minutes."
Georgia State (6-9, 1-3) took its biggest lead of the game, 62-57, on a Chan Harris jumper with 2:23 remaining in the game. From that point, ODU's pressure defense and Voronina's offense took over.
The Lady Monarchs forced three consecutive Panther turnovers and Voronina netted eight consecutive points to put Old Dominion up 65-62 with 46 seconds to go.
On Georgia State's next possession, the Panthers got two shots off, but both hit back iron and ODU got the ball back with 25 seconds left. After being fouled, sophomore Jackie Cook hit 1-of-2 from the free throw line sealing the Lady Monarchs win.
Senior guard Jasmine Parker had an extremely efficient game, scoring 14 points on 4-of-8 shooting. All four of her field goals came from three-point land. Senior Shadasia Green posted 12 points and dished out a game-high six assists.
Old Dominion trailed 14-11 at the 11:33 mark of the first half before going on a 17-3 run to go up 26-17 with just over five minutes remaining in the stanza.
ODU's lead got to as many as 11 late in the opening period, but the Panthers made five first half triples against the nation's best three-point field goal percentage defense to go into halftime down only five (36-31).
The Lady Monarchs scored the first five points out of the break to go up 10, but Georgia State used a 16-6 spurt to tie the game with 12:25 remaining. The Panthers took their first lead since midway through the first half on an Angelique Burtts lay-in with just over seven minutes to go.
Old Dominion remains on the road Sunday at Delaware. Tip time is set for 2 p.m. from the Bob Carpenter Center in Newark, Del.
-ODU-