Anemic roster fuels Tigers' conference loss to Wildcats

NORMAL -- Taking the court with a seriously depleted roster, the Urbana girls basketball team dropped their fifth conference game of the season on the road on Saturday, January 8. The Tigers, with just six players available players, suffered a 52-10 loss at Normal West.

Gabrielle Mboyo-Meta led Urbana's scoring effort with six points. Junior McKenzie Sprague and freshman Jasmine McCullough rounded out their team's side of the scoreboard with two points apiece.

Though there were limited opportunities between numerous turnovers, neither team was able to score until there was 4:28 left in the opening quarter. Megan Williams sank a trey to put the Wildcats up 3-0.

Normal West then capitalized on an overthrown Tigers' pass to go up 5-0 thanks to a bucket in the paint from Meredith Bertsche. With a little more than three minutes to play in the quarter, Ashley Wilcox added two more points from under the basket to give the Wildcats a 7-0 advantage.

Urbana responded by stepping up their defensive effort. Next, the squad put their first points on the board with a free throw from Mboyo-Meta. A minute and 45 seconds later, the Tigers were back in the game down, 7-4.

The understaffed Urbana team was limited to just eight first-half points.

It was Normal West's Monie Howard and her two-quarter, ten-point run and the inability to rotate players in that sealed Urbana's fate.

The Wildcats had three players reach double figures. Williams had 11 points, Howard was good for 10, and Wilcox drained another 10 points in the Big Twelve Conference victory.

Mboyo-Meta and the Tigers are scheduled to play on the road for the next three contests starting Thursday at Danville, Saturday at St. Teresa in Decatur, and at Rantoul next Tuesday. Urbana's next home game will be against Mattoon on January 20.

Box Score

Final: Urbana 10 - Normal West 52

  1 2 3 4 F
Urbana 4 4 0 2 10
Normal West 7 16 21 8 52

Urbana --
Mboyo-Meta 1 (1) 1-2 -- 6, Sprague 1 (0) 0-0 -- 2, McCullough 1 (0) 0-0 -- 2, T. Hall 0 (0) 0-0 -- 0, Edwards 0 (0) 0-0 -- 0, J. Hall 0 (0) 0-0 -- 0

Normal West --
Kobel 1 (2) 0-0 -- 8, Wilcox 4 (0) 2-2 -- 10, Wertheim 0 (0) 0-0 -- 0, Gale 1 (1) 1-1 -- 6, Wilson 1 (0) 0-1 -- 2, Howard 5 (0) 0-0 -- 10, Williams 1 (3) 0-0 -- 11, Tinsley 0 (0) 1-3 -- 1, Bertsche 1 (0) 0-0 -- 2, Patton 1 (0) -9 -- 2