Florida Gulf Coast extends its home winning streak to 42 with WNIT opening round win over Drexel

By Cheryl Coward

WNIT Results: Friday, March 18

• Florida 59, UMBC 47 || Box Score
• FGCU 73, Drexel 67 || Box Score

Florida Gulf Coast (28-3), the Atlantic Sun Conference regular season champion, defeated Drexel 73-67 in WNIT first round action Friday night. It was the 42^nd straight home victory for the Eagles, who are in their last year of transition to the Division I level. Only Stanford and Connecticut have longer home winning streaks.

Junior Nicoya Jackson came off the bench to score a team-high 17 points. Senior Shannon Murphy and junior Kelsey Jacobson each finished with 15 points and three rebounds. Redshirt-freshman Sarah Hansen had 10 points, six rebounds and two assists.

Next season FGCU will be eligible to compete in conference and NCAA postseason action.

FGCU’s win advances them to the second round to face Florida (19-14) at home on Monday, March 21 at 7:05 p.m. EST at Alico Arena.

In other action, Florida beat University of Maryland, Baltimore County 59-47. Jordan Jones scored a game-high 18 points for the Gators.

“Obviously, we are very pleased to be able to win and play another day,” said UF head coach Amanda Butler postgame. “There are a lot of things we have to do better and you never know when you have such a huge gap between games, what will happen. We had fantastic practices, but it is a little bit different practicing hard and bringing it to the games. It took us a second to get going but the second half was a little bit more of what we wanted to see based on the practices and preparation that we had.”

Second Round

Saturday, March 19

• Auburn at Toledo, 12 p.m. EST
• St. Joseph’s at Boston College, 1:30 p.m. EST
• Utah State at BYU, 5 p.m. EST
• Duquesne at Kansas, 8 p.m. EST

Sunday, March 20

• Illinois State at Wisconsin, 2 p.m. EST
• Charlotte at South Carolina, 2 p.m. EST
• Arkansas at Missouri, 3 p.m. EST
• Alabama at Northwestern, 3 p.m. EST
• Virginia at Loyola, 4 p.m. EST
• Southern Cal at Nevada, 5 p.m. EST

Monday, March 21

• St. Bonaventure at Syracuse, 7 p.m. EST
• Eastern Michigan at UNC Wilmington, 7 p.m. EST
• Florida at Florida Gulf Coast, 7:05 p.m. EST
• Tulane at Oral Roberts, 8 p.m. EST
• California at Colorado, 9 p.m. EST
• Oklahoma State at Wyoming, 9 p.m. EST