ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Jasmine Joyner may play basketball wearing a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga jersey, but she seems to feel right at home in the mountains of North Carolina.
One day after scoring a career-high 22 points to open the Southern Conference tournament, the sophomore post player had another monster day, scoring 26 points and grabbing 20 rebounds as the 17th-ranked Mocs beat Furman 68-55 to advance to Sunday’s championship game against East Tennessee State. She also had three blocked shots, an assist and a steal in the win.
“She’s a terrific player,” Mocs coach Jim Foster said following the game. “She’s very coachable, and when she learns how to front the post she’s going to be great. She just does good things out there.”
After the Mocs (28-3) fell behind 2-0 on a layup by Furman’s Sarah Durdaller, they went on a 14-2 run with eight of those points coming from Joyner. Furman made a small run to cut the margin to five on a 3-pointer by Whitney Bunn, but UTC again pushed the lead to double digits and led 33-19 at halftime — the seventh time in eight games that a Mocs opponent has scored 20 or fewer points in the first 20 minutes.
Keiana Gilbert works to get the ball past Furman’s defense in their game Friday, March 6, 2015.Joyner had 14 points and 13 rebounds by the intermission, and she seemed to have no trouble making the transition from Thursday’s game against UNC Greensboro at Kimmel Arena to Friday’s game at the U.S. Cellular Center in downtown Asheville.
“I just tried not to let the different gym or different ball or stuff get in the way of my game,” she said. “I just tried to think about home in Chattanooga, and I’m playing with the same girls, running the same plays for the same coaches. So I just got that out of my head and didn’t make excuses and made my free throws and just played ball.”
Both teams shot relatively low percentages in the first half, but the Mocs’ tough defense forced the Paladins to make mistakes that caused nine turnovers to just one for UTC. The Mocs scored 13 points off those turnovers. For the game, UTC won the turnover category 15-5.
“(Furman) makes more 3s than anyone in the league, and we wanted to make every 3 they got difficult,” Foster said “We did that for the most part, and then we wanted to jam up on them when they tried to isolate Jas.
“I thought defensively we did exactly what we wanted to do.”
Freshman Keiana Gilbert and senior Ka’Vonne Towns each scored 11 points for UTC, but it was Joyner’s day to lead her team on both ends of the court.
“We depend a lot on her in the post,” Gilbert said. “When we’re not shooting good, we know we can depend on Jas to score in the post. And if one of the guards gets past us, we can depend on her to help us out down in the paint.”
Alicia Payne and Jim Foster watch the Moc’s victory over Furman on Friday, March 6, 2015.Furman (19-13) was led by Brittany Hodges with 21 points and 10 rebounds, and Bunn scored 18 points.
Joyner said she saw early on that she could have a big rebounding game by using her quickness against Hodges.
“I saw that (crashing the boards) was their weakness early in the game, and I tried to take advantage of it,” she said “My strategy is when my teammates take a shot … I try to think it’s a miss so I can go and crash the boards if it’s a miss or a make.”
“And I’m kind of quicker than their post player, so I tried to take advantage of that since Brittany is stronger than me. So I tried to be quicker than her to get the rebounds.”
Now the Mocs get a day off before Sunday’s 1 p.m. game against ETSU, which beat Mercer 66-56 in Friday’s second semifinal, and Foster plans on keeping his team on the same basic routine that’s gotten the Mocs this far.
“We’ll get up, eat breakfast,” he said. “We’ll go to practice, and then (the team will) go back to bed. Then we’ll get up and eat again. They’ll watch games in the afternoon, and we’ll prepare for them.”
Contact Jim Tanner at jtanner@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6478. Follow him at twitter.com/JFTanner.