Photos courtesy of Mark Campbell

Boxscore

NEWARK, Del. -- University of Delaware women's basketball head coach Tina Martin earned her 250th career victory Thursday night as the Blue Hens placed five scorers in doubles figures and cruised to a 72-49 Colonial Athletic Association women's basketball triumph over Towson at the Bob Carpenter Center.

Delaware (13-6, 5-3 CAA) won its second straight game and captured its fifth win in the last seven outings as the Hens jumped out to a 10-point halftime lead and never looked back in posting their second biggest victory margin of the season.

Blue Hen freshman All-American candidate Elena Delle Donne scored all of her team-high 18 points in the first half to stake UD to the 37-27 lead at the break, but sat down the entire second half after suffering an injury to her right elbow late in the first stanza.

Delle Donne, the nation's third leading scorer at 25.9 points per game, is expected to return for the Hens' next game Sunday at defending CAA champion Drexel in Philadelphia.

But Delle Donne's injury hardly mattered for the Hens, who scored the first seven points of the second half to build the lead to 17 points and stayed in front by at least 14 points the rest of the way. The win was the Hens' largest since a 72-43 victory over Houston back on Nov. 27.

Freshman point guard Lauren Carra (top right) came off the bench to hit 14 points and dish out four assists while Danielle Parker, Jocelyn Bailey, and Ariene Jenkins (bottom left) each added 10 points. Parker pulled down nine rebounds, Bailey pulled down seven, and Kayla Miller dished out a career-high seven assists. Jenkins, a junior backup forward who had not seen action in the last three games and did not play in the first half, took over for Delle Donne down low in the second half and hit on 5 of 7 shots from the field to spark the Hens.

“This is a nice win for the program,” said Martin, who improved to 250-155 in her 14th season at Delaware and became the third active coach in the CAA to reach that win plateau. It’s really a credit to all the coaches that I’ve worked with and the players that have played for us. We had a lot of kids step up for us tonight – we had five in double digits. You can do great things when the team doesn’t care who scores. Ariene [Jenkins] really stepped up in the second half, it was great. She and [Lauren] Carra, [Jocelyn] Bailey… every player, they all came in and played their part. The team really rallied around each other tonight.”

Towson (9-10, 3-5 CAA), which defeated the University of Maryland earlier this season, lost its second straight and fell for the fifth time in the Tigers' last six games. Kandace Davis led Towson with 12 points while All-CAA guard Shanae Baker-Brice chipped in with 11 points and Haliena Snowden contributed 10 points. Baker-Brice and Snowden were saddled with foul trouble most of the night.

Towson had won four of the last five meetings with the Blue Hens, including a win that knocked the Hens out of the CAA Tournament a year ago.

Delaware, which improved to 21-8 all-time vs. Towson in Newark, enjoyed its best shooting night of the season as the Hens shot 55.1 percent from the field for the game (27 of 49), including 16 of 28 shooting in the second half as the Hens outscored the Tigers 35-22.

The Hens knocked down 6 of 10 three-point attempts, including a 3 for 4 performance by Carra. Towson hit just 17 of 54 shots from the field (31.5 percent) and were 3 of 20 from beyond the three-point line.

The first half featured four lead changes and two ties in the first eight minutes before the Hens took control. Delle Donne keyed a 12-4 run by connecting on back-to-back three-pointers and knocking down two free throws to give Delaware a 23-15 lead with 7:47 left in the half. The Hens went up by as much as 13 points at 35-22 on a layup by Eva Riddick at the 2:37 mark before settling for a 37-27 advantage at the break.

With Delle Donne still in the training room getting treatment, the Hens put the game away in the first four minutes of the second half as Jenkins dropped in two layups and Baily added another as part of a 7-0 run that pushed the UD lead to 44-27 with 16:13 left. The Tigers never got closer than 15 points the rest of the way as the Hens cruised to their biggest CAA win since a 65-35 victory over Northeastern on March 1, 2007 in Boston.

The regularly scheduled 7 p.m. game started 45 minutes late as Towson, located an hour drive from Delaware, did not arrive at the Bob Carpenter Center until just before 7 p.m. after its bus was stuck in traffic behind an accident on I-95 in Maryland.