Mercer women cruise past Western Carolina

The Mercer women's team's strong defense was on full display Thursday night at Hawkins Arena as the Bears shut down Western Carolina 63-42 in Southern Conference play.

The Bears completed a season sweep of the Catamounts after winning the first meeting 92-88 in January. Western Carolina didn't come close to matching its output from the first meeting in the rematch.

The Catamounts shot just 18-of-51 (35.7 percent) from the floor and only led for 1:37 of the contest.

Mercer improves to 17-6 overall with its 11th win in 12 games and is now 7-1 in conference play. Western Carolina is 6-16 and 2-6.

THREE WHO MATTERED

Kahlia Lawrence: The Bears' leading scorer for the season had a game-high 20 points and finished with six rebounds.

KeKe Calloway: The Mary Persons product finished with 12 points and four rebounds.

Kayla Potts: Adding to the team's 27-14 advantage in bench points, Potts had nine points.

OBSERVATIONS

Lawrence is on a roll: When the Bears' leader is on, she can be almost unstoppable, especially with her mid-range shot. Lawrence hit 9-of-16 from the floor, and most of those made shots came off the dribble in the mid-range.

Back on track: Mercer has responded well to its first conference loss to East Tennessee State on Jan. 23, winning three straight games.

Slow night: Western Carolina, which was averaging 64.6 points per game before Thursday, never got going against the suffocating Mercer defense. The Catamounts' best quarter was 12 points in the second.

WORTH MENTIONING

Back in a tie for first: At 7-1, Mercer is tied for first place in the conference standings with Samford. The Bears beat the Bulldogs in January, and the two teams play Feb. 13 at Hawkins Arena.

THEY SAID IT

Mercer head coach Susie Gardner: "One of our goals the second time around is to see, 'Have we gotten better?' I think they were either our first or second game of the conference, and we really have been emphasizing, 'Get better every day,' and we knew their players a little bit better. A lot of my freshmen, they don't know the conference as well as I do, and I thought we kind of stepped up to the challenge. I thought we played with such grit and hustle. That's the thing that stood out to me, was how hard we hustled after every ball."

Calloway: "It feels great to be able to contribute to the team goal, which is just getting better every day, and winning with the team is wonderful."

Lawrence: "We just came into this game knowing the last time we played them we went to overtime, so we had to switch some things up. We got better from the first time around, so we just played really hard."

WHAT'S NEXT?

Mercer hosts UNC Greensboro on Saturday afternoon.

This story was originally published February 4, 2016 at 9:52 PM with the headline "Mercer women cruise past Western Carolina ."