Dec. 20, 2002

Box Score

Sophomore point guard Katie Davenport (Albuquerque, N.M./Cibola) scored a career-high 17 points to lead the University of Denver women's basketball team to an 86-58 victory over Princeton Friday in the first round of the Pioneer Classic at Magness Arena. Denver, winners of the last two games, improves to 4-6 on the season, while Princeton falls to 4-5. Denver advanced to the championship game to play Northwestern Saturday at 7 p.m.

Davenport, making her second career start, began the contest the same way she did her first starting assignment - by scoring the first points of the game on a three point bucket. The Pioneers took the early lead and did not relinquish it for the entire contest. However, Princeton cut the Pioneer advantage to one point with just under two minutes to remaining in the half. Denver scored the last four points of the half to take a 33-28 edge to the locker room.

"The biggest difference in Katie's (Davenport) game is her confidence level," Head coach Pam Tanner said. "I'm happy for her. She had another outstanding performance tonight. As a team, we missed a lot of shots in the first half, but the good news is we were getting the shots we wanted, they just didn't fall."

"We made some defensive adjustments at halftime that allowed us to shut down the three point shooting," Tanner added. "The defense led to some good offense for us as well."

Denver shot 31.0 percent in the first half, and 55.6 percent in the second stanza. The Pioneers got the lead up to 16 points just five minutes into the second period with a 12-4 run fueled by six points from freshman Nakia Carlisle (St. Paul, Minn./Central). Denver continued to put the game away, leading by as many as 31 points and earned a convincing 86-58 decision.

Including Davenport, five Pioneers scored in double figures, and every player earned at least nine minutes of game time. Ashley Atkinson extended her double digit scoring streak to seven games with 12 points. Nicky Eason, Ragan Neblett and Carlisle each contributed 12 points as well. Rebecca Brown and Karen Bolster scored 10 points apiece for the Tigers.

In the first game of the night, Northwestern defeated Morehead State (76-55) to advance to the championship game to face the Pioneers. Sarah Kwasinski scored 18 points and grabbed 13 rebounds to lead the Wildcats. Northwestern earned a sizable lead at the half (42-26), and held on to win despite being outscored by Morehead State 40-34 in the second period. Northwestern improved to 5-4 on the season, while MSU fell to 5-3. MSU will square off against Princeton in the consolation game at 5 p.m., Saturday at Magness Arena.