Tweet #FanTheFlames

Paced by a big first quarter the Lee women's basketball team delivered an 85-60 victory over Bryan College to the homecoming crowd at Walker Arena on Saturday afternoon.

Coming off the program's first victory over a Division I school on Thursday against the University of Memphis there was very little hangover for the Lady Flames as they fired out to a 35-13 lead at the end of the first period and never looked back.

Freshman point guard Lindsey Roddy led the balanced scoring attack for Lee with 14 points to go along with six rebounds. Junior forward Carrie Cheeks added 13 points in the paint and hauled in eight boards while freshman Maddie Long tallied 12 points and dished off five assists.

The Lady Flames would make it five total players scoring in double-figures as a pair of freshman, Taylor Boggess and Abby Bertram each had 11.

"I think we got what we wanted to accomplish out of this week and I don't mean two wins because at the end of the day we are still 0-0," noted head coach Marty Rowe. "We got a chance to get our freshman some valuable minutes against some really good teams. Of course Memphis is a D1 school and Bryan is a really good basketball team who won 26 games last year and I think they are better this year so that was very important for us to play well in these two games and use that moving forward."

Rowe's club registered 19 assists and committed 14 turnovers while forcing Bryan into 19 floor mistakes. The pesky Lee defense swiped 13 steals with Anna Woodford and Bertram leading the way with three each.

The Lady Flames finished shooting 43.1 percent from the field while holding Bryan to just 26.8 percent. Lee was efficient from the foul line hitting 12 of 15 good for 80 percent. The Lions went to the line 34 times and cashed in 28 (82.4 percent).

"I thought we played with some great energy and effort in the first quarter and then we ran out of gas a little bit because of foul trouble and because of us wanting to play a lot of people," said Rowe. "Now we have to get better this week in practice and continue to improve as we head down to Florida to start the season."

Bryan College was paced by Megan Billingsby who hit 8 of 14 shots and finished with 21 points and five rebounds to lead her team in both categories. Ashli Chew added eight points and Keniesha Love and Kaylee Smith had six each.

When asked about the play of his freshman class Rowe remarked, "This freshman class of three guards and a forward is very special and they can really play ball but we will need to be patient with them because of course they are young and they will need to learn as the year goes on but we are very excited about the future with them."

After two impressive exhibition victories the Lady Flames will now set their sights on games that matter as they open up regular season play on Friday at 12 p.m. against Saint Leo in the Gulf South-Sunshine State Conference Challenge from Lakeland, Fla. On Saturday Lee will turn around and play host Florida Southern at 2 p.m.