by Abigail Kopp | Dec 16, 2021 | News Slider, Sports
The Lipscomb women’s basketball team suffered an agonizing loss to the Tennessee State Tigers 50-49 Wednesday night at Allen Arena. Sophomore guard Blythe Pearson scored 20 points for the Bisons, adding 7 rebounds as well. Pearson went 7-11 from the field, shooting 64%. Senior center Dorie Harrison added 11 points for Lipscomb. The Kentucky transfer pulled down 16 rebounds, a season high. “Honestly, we kinda got rattled by the press,” assistant coach Colsten Thompson said. “They’re super athletic with a type of defense we haven’t really seen yet.” The first quarter was a close battle on the court, both teams swinging back and forth with baskets, ending at 8-8. Cook led off with 4 points for the team, Collier and Hemphill both adding two for the team. Defense played fantastically on both teams, putting up a fight for anyone to make an easy shot. In the second quarter the Bisons fell behind at 15-14, Tennessee State making a big run at the start, but Lipscomb pulled ahead making a series of shots to catch up. Harrison made 6 of the 14 shots for the Bisons, Vinson coming in second with five for her team, Pearson making three points. Static energy enveloped the court as our team was one point behind at 23-22 for halftime. “Once we got settled into the rhythm coming out into the second half, we were able to kinda get going defensively a bit,” Thompson said. Starting off with a three-pointer, Pearson made another and ended with a three-pointer, giving her team 9 points in the third quarter. Jordan Peete blew out her shoes, needing a...
by Danny Kotula | Dec 13, 2021 | News Slider, Sports
The Lipscomb men’s basketball team continued a poor run of form in a 65-73 loss to the Tennessee State Tigers Sunday afternoon at Allen Arena. Down by 11 at the break and as many as 19 during the second half, the Bisons were unable to complete a last-gasp comeback effort to take down TSU. “We’ve just got to be better in the first half,” point guard Will Pruitt said. “We had 10 turnovers coming out of the first half, and I for myself have just got to be better, and we’ve got to be better as a team.” “We were fighting back in the second half, which is tough,” Pruitt said. Pruitt, a redshirt freshman from Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, led the Bisons in scoring with 14 points. Pruitt, who fouled out in the final minute of the game and committed four turnovers, added three steals for the Bisons and was a perfect 6-6 at the free throw line. Senior forward Parker Hazen added 12 points and 6 rebounds for the Bisons. The former Iowa Western Community College and Valparaiso player went 2-5 from the 3-point line. A pair of offensive weapons struggled uncharacteristically for Lipscomb on a night where almost nothing went right. Second-year freshman forward Jacob Ognacevic, the team’s leading scorer, put up just 7 points, while sharpshooting guard Greg Jones shot just 2-8 from distance and ended with 10 points. As a whole, Lipscomb shot just 10-26 from the floor in the first half, while TSU shot an even 50%, going 16-32. The Tigers also shot 45% from beyond the arc, making 5-11 at the 3-point line....
by Danny Kotula | Dec 13, 2021 | News Slider, Sports
The Lipscomb women’s basketball team beat the Tennessee Wesleyan University Bulldogs 86-44 Sunday afternoon at Allen Arena. Five players scored in double figures for the Bisons, and four earned career-high scoring totals in Purple and Gold. One player who reached both those achievements was true freshman wing Katherine Weakley, who finished with 11 points on 4-10 shooting. The Worthington, Ohio-born guard went 3-8 from behind the 3-point line and added 2 rebounds to her line. “I started off kinda slow,” Weakley said, “but we picked up our energy after halftime. We started talking more, and I think that helped pick up the pace of the game. Some shots went in, and it’s because we were having great passes and moving the ball on offense.” “We’ve been working on [that] a lot in practice this past week, trying to pass up the good shots to get great shots,” Weakley said. “That’s why we shot so well and everybody was able to contribute in different ways.” Leading the Bisons in scoring was junior transfer Maddie Cook, who shot an efficient 6-7 from the floor for 12 points. Cook, who transferred from Belmont last year, also added 6 rebounds. Sophomore guard Blythe Pearson shot 3-7 from the 3-point line en route to 11 points for Lipscomb, adding 4 rebounds and 4 assists in a team-leading 24 minutes for the Bisons. The home side dominated the first quarter, using stifling defense to work up a 14-point advantage after one quarter. Cook scored 6 to pace the Bisons as they took a 21-7 advantage into the second period. A 10-3 run midway through the...
by Gunnar Eng | Dec 11, 2021 | News Slider, Sports
A ping pong tournament in the Student Activities Center provided a welcome distraction for students heading into finals. “I think it gives everyone time to relax, not worry about anything, and a chance to come out and play,” tournament participant Evan Johnston said. “Even though it is a bit stressful at times with everyone watching because of just one table, it’s a great time to take your mind off things and compete.” The recent tournament was the first sports event organized by the newly formed Student Athletic Advisory Committee and was run by committee member Hanna Anderson. “S.A.A.C. is a student-athlete organization that has two representatives from each athletic team,” Anderson said. “The goal is to bring issues we find within athletics to our administrators, as well as organizing events for the community and school.” The event was also involved with the committee’s annual canned food drive, requiring $2 or a canned food item as entry fee. “We really want to get our numbers up for the food drive this year, because it’s a competition between the ASUN schools in our conference,” Anderson said. “We want to win this food drive just as much as we do our individual sports, because it goes to such a good cause with the Second Harvest Food Bank, so it takes a lot of planning to pull an event like this off.” Student participants in the tournament were also appreciative of the fact that a less popular sport such as ping pong was able to be played in a tournament setting. “It may not get as much money as the more popular sports, but...
by Danny Kotula | Dec 8, 2021 | News Slider, Sports, Uncategorized
The Lipscomb women’s basketball team dominated Division III LaGrange by a 77-45 scoreline Wednesday morning at Allen Arena. The game welcomed lower school students between kindergarten and 2nd grade from Lipscomb Academy, who took a field trip down Granny White Pike to watch the Bisons play. “That was fun,” assistant coach Chris Sumski said. “It meant a lot. Even [head coach] Lauren [Sumski] got a little bit emotional at the beginning of the game with the kids cheering. Our kids really enjoyed that, we’re really thankful to them today.” With hundreds of Academy students cheering them on, the Bisons left no room for doubt about the result. Lipscomb scored the first ten points, 5 of which came from junior forward Maddie Cook, and they never looked back. Cook, a Belmont transfer led the team in scoring for the second straight game, finishing with 13 on 6-8 shooting from the floor. A combination of balanced offense and stifling defense led the Bisons to full control on the scoreboard and on the court, giving them a 19-4 advantage after one period. The second quarter continued in the same vein, leading the home side to a 41-15 advantage at the midway point. Lipscomb owned the paint over the course of the half, outscoring LaGrange 26-2 and racking up 5 blocks. Senior center Dorie Harrison was responsible for 3 of those blocks and ended with 4. She added 13 points and 4 rebounds to that tally. “Our plan is to play our best basketball every time we step on the court,” Harrison said. “We were just having fun. Everybody was hyping each other...
by Danny Kotula | Dec 6, 2021 | News Slider, Sports
The Lipscomb men’s basketball team lost 85-64 to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Mocs Sunday afternoon at Allen Arena in Nashville. Lipscomb loses for the second straight time and drops to 5-4 with the loss, while Chattanooga improves to 7-1. Despite the loss, redshirt freshman forward Jacob Ognacevic continued to pour in points, producing a 23-point outing against the Mocs. Ognacevic, of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, made nine baskets from the floor on the evening and was just one of two players in double figures for Lipscomb. Sophomore guard Greg Jones was the other Bison to finish with over 10 points, racking up 12 on just two field goals. The game started poorly for the home team and only got worse, as Chattanooga dominated early and late on, finding a way to sneak by in the start of the second half as Lipscomb began to make a run. The Bisons cut a 36-16 halftime deficit to a 4-point game just five minutes into the second half, but they were unable to hold on as they were once again torched at the 3-point line. After giving up 94 points to Belmont and allowing 41 3-point attempts, they allowed 12-25 shooting from behind the arc this afternoon. On the other side of the ball, a 38.8% mark from the field is Lipscomb’s worst shooting percentage this season. The Mocs defense rose to the challenge Lipscomb provided and kept the Bisons away from the basket in their home gym. Lipscomb did earn 29 trips to the free throw line, converting on 22 of them. Head coach Lennie Acuff and his Bisons are still...
