Lady Hawks beat Spelman, return to top of GSAC standings

ATLANTA – Sophomore Patricia Pickens battled through illness and turned in a career-high scoring performance to lead the Huntingdon women's basketball team Wednesday night.

Pickens scored 26 points and pulled down 10 rebounds to lead the Lady Hawks past Spelman 67-61. The double-double was the fourth for Pickens in six games.

"Pat did an outstanding job for us tonight," Huntingdon head coach Buzz Phillips said. "She was battling a stomach virus, but she came out and gave our team everything she had."

The win, coupled with Agnes Scott's 56-45 loss to Covenant creates a tie at the top of the Great South Athletic Conference standings. Huntingdon (14-9, 7-2 GSAC) and Agnes Scott (13-9, 7-2 GSAC) lead the conference. Each team has one conference game remaining in the regular season.

"This was a big road win for us," Phillips said. "Spelman has been playing well at home but we came out ready to play. Morgan Crawford had a good night for us and Jodie Thomas really did a good job rebounding for us."

Crawford finished with 21 points, five steals, four assists and four rebounds. Thomas finished with 16 rebounds and Tanjanik Munford added eight rebounds.

The two teams traded leads in the first half, with Spelman (7-17, 4-6 GSAC) building an eight-point lead and the Lady Hawks building a seven-point lead. Huntingdon led 35-33 at the half.

Huntingdon began to ease ahead in the second half and built a 50-38 lead with 13:49 to play. From there, the Lady Hawks controlled the tempo for the remainder of the game.

Huntingdon returns to action at home on Saturday, hosting Wesleyan at 1 p.m.