Lady Hawks hold off Meredith for second conference win

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – The Huntingdon women's basketball team fought off a late rally by Meredith College and held on for a 69-63 win Sunday afternoon.

Huntingdon built as much as an 18-point lead in the second half and led by 17 points, 60-43, with 8:24 to play in the game. But the Avenging Angels rallied with a 16-1 run and pulled within two points, 61-59, with 3:12 to play.

Leading 66-63 with 19 seconds left, Raven Prater sank two free throws and Jodie Thomas added a final free throw with four seconds to play to seal the win.

The win is the third straight and the second conference win for the Lady Hawks (8-3, 2-2 USA South). Meredith drops to 3-6 (1-2 USA South).

"This was a good game from start to finish," Huntingdon head coach Buzz Phillips said. "My hat is off to Meredith. A lot of teams wouldn't be able to come back from a 17-point deficit late in the game. But Meredith turned it up and got right back in the game.

"At the same time, our girls didn't fold either. After giving up a 17-point lead, it would be easy to get down on ourselves and not finish the game. But our girls did what we had to do in the final minutes. We got some turnovers, made some big rebounds and hit our free throws. We stepped up at the end."

A day after scoring 30 points and hitting eight 3-pointers, Prater led Huntingdon with 22 points and four 3-pointers against Meredith. Pat Pickens added 12 points, Tan Munford finished with 15 rebounds and nine points and Thomas had eight rebounds.

Huntingdon returns to action on Saturday at nationally ranked Ferrum (9-0, 3-0 USA South). The Panthers are ranked No. 22 by D3hoops.com and are the second team receiving votes in the USA Today Top 25 poll.