Toledo women win tourney title over Nevada

Coach Cullop gets 100th win; Shafir named MVP

11/25/2012

RENO — The Univer­sity of Toledo women’s bas­ket­ball team cap­tured the John Ascuaga’s Nugget Clas­sic ti­tle, top­ping host Ne­vada on Satur­day in the cham­pi­on­ship game, 73-61.

The win was the 100th at Toledo for fifth-year coach Tri­cia Cul­lop. She joins Bill Fen­nelly and Mark Ehlen as the only coaches in school his­tory to top the cen­tury mark.

Re­serve guard Janelle Reed-Lewis led the Rock­ets with 15 points, while tour­na­ment Most Valu­able Player, guard Naama Sha­fir and wing Inma Zanoguera chipped in with 11 and 10, re­spec­tively.

Zanoguera and center Bri­anna Jones shared team hon­ors with six re­bounds, and Sha­fir recorded seven as­sists.

Reed-Lewis made three of her team’s nine 3-point­ers.

The Rock­ets (4-1) put to­gether a 15-1 run in the first half and en­tered half­time up 46-24.

UT shot an im­pres­sive 44.4 per­cent (28-of-63) from the field, in­clud­ing 40.9 per­cent (9-of-22) from be­yond the arc, and 66.7 per­cent (8-of-12) from the char­ity stripe to claim its sixth tour­ney ti­tle in school his­tory and third un­der Cul­lop.

For a sec­ond-straight game, the Rock­ets did not trail and raced out to a 10-4 lead at the 16:13 mark be­hind six early points from senior center Yolanda Rich­ard­son.

The Start prod­uct, who fin­ished with eight points, con­verted a pair of lay­ups and knocked down both of her free throws in the open­ing three-plus min­utes.

An­dola Dortch (eight points) joined Sha­fir on the all-tour­na­ment team.

Toledo, which topped Santa Clara 73-48 on Thurs­day, out­re­bounded Ne­vada (3-2) 43-37.