Web exclusive: Young makes short work of record, from long range
Senior makes 3-pointer for scoring record
Posted on January 25, 2008
Not only did she enter the James Madison record books, but Tamera Young did it in style as JMU beat Hofstra 80-64 on Thursday night.
The senior forward hit her second 3-pointer as she was fouled just 3 minutes, 12 seconds into the game to break Meredith Alexis’ school record for points scored. After a timeout was called by JMU coach Kenny Brooks, Young hit the free throw for a 4-point play. But before the timeout she pointed to someone in the audience.
“It was funny because the football academic advisor, Justin Ruffin, I met with him a couple days ago and he was like ‘I want you to shoot all 3-pointers until you get it.’”
While Young said she didn’t expect to break the record that way, Brooks called it a “perfect scenario” to call a timeout and make the significance clear to the crowd of 1,706 at the Convocation Center.
Young passed Meredith Alexis’ mark of 1,760 points against an old friend, former JMU assistant Krista Kilburn-Steveskey. She joked with Kilburn-Steveskey after the game that she was waiting for her to visit to break the record.
The Colonial Athletic Association’s leading scorer entered the game shooting 4-of-37 from three. But on her historic night she was hot, hitting her first two attempts and finishing 2-of-3 from long range.
Madison improved to 11-6 overall, 4-2 in the conference against the Pride (3-14, 1-5). While Young struggled with her range throughout Madison’s first 15 games, she led the team with 48 3-pointers for the 2006-07 season. With that in mind, her coaching staff put together a film showing her that she was close to making them this year, too.
“I told my assistant coach, coach O’Regan — and this was probably right after Christmas — make a clip of every one of her threes this year, so she can see them,” Brooks said. “When we looked at it, she was on for a lot of them. They just hit the back of the rim, the front of the rim, and then it became mental. Then she started trying to aim the ball in.”
After scoring 18 points in the first half, Young focused on distributing the ball in the second period as JMU extended its 38-27 halftime margin. She finished with 19 points on 7-of-13 shooting to go along with eight rebounds.
Brooks made a point of defending Young against criticisms that she takes too many shots at the post-game press conference.
“You know what she’s doing? She is doing what I ask her to do,” Brooks said. “I have Tamera Young for two more months — the best player to ever play at JMU — I’m gonna get her shots.”
JMU freshman center Lauren Jiminez picked up the slack in the second half, scoring 18 of her team-leading 20 points in the second stanza. She finished with six rebounds, while junior forward Nina Uqdah led the team with 12 boards.
Hofstra freshman guard Britne Rodgers led her team with 20 points and seven rebounds. The Pride lost four starters from last season’s squad that finished with a conference record of 13-5, and are struggling to fill in the gaps.
“I thought my kids fought tonight,” Kilburn-Steveskey said. “If you had seen our previous games we didn’t have a lot of fight.”
After the historic night, Madison moves its focus to a game Sunday at Towson (14-3, 5-0). Handing the Tigers their first conference loss would certainly be a nice follow up to Young’s accomplishment.
