Women’s basketball tames Tigers

Peddy paces Owls With Temple career-high 27 points

The game certainly did not start the way women’s basketball coach Tonya Cardoza would’ve liked. Through four minutes Auburn’s high pressure full court press defense had the Lady Owls on the ropes, thankfully the game is 40 minutes long.

Once the Owls settled down after the first timeout it was all Temple as the Owls went on to defeat the Auburn Tigers 73-57. The Owl’s were reeling for the first few minutes, but Cardoza knew once her team calmed down and refocused that things would be fine.

“We lose focus, we had just talked about how we would break the press and we made bad decisions,” Cardoza said. “After the first time out we really figured out how to break it and made good decisions, which forced them to go away from the press until the last few minutes.”

By the time Auburn would go back to the press though it would be to late as senior guard Shey Peddy would just be finishing up on her Temple career-high 27 points. Peddy also added, six rebounds and five steals, one of which gave the Owls a huge momentum boost going into the break.

With the 12 seconds remaining in the first half Temple lead by 12, but the team wasn’t satisfied with the lead. Before time expired, Peddy assisted on a three pointer by freshman guard Tyonna Williams, then managed to steal the inbounds pass, and set up a three pointer by junior forward Brittany Lewis with three seconds remaining. Peddy said she felt great once her first shot fell.

“I felt good, one the first one went in it felt like they all started falling and our team got the job done,” Peddy said.

Peddy also added that this was a huge win coming off of a five-game losing streak in which she felt her play was sub-par.

“I wanted to give my all, the past few games a haven’t played my best, I wanted to step up and go as hard as I can.”

The Owls will now look to carry this momentum into a stretch of tough games home games beginning with Kent State on Tuesday, followed by games over the break week against UCLA, Villanova, and national powerhouse Duke.

Anthony Bellino can be reached at anthony.bellino@temple.edu.