Nov. 16, 2002

FAIRFAX, VA...Four George Mason women's basketball players hit for ten or more points Saturday as the Patriots defeated the Melbourne Tigers 70-58 in an exhibition game at the Patriot Center.

Junior Vernessa Neamo (Forestville, MD) and senior Khalilah Smith (Eastampton, NJ) led Mason with 15 and 14 points, respectively. Both players were each just one rebound away from a double-double, finishing the game with nine boards.

Jen Derevjanik (Staten Island, NY), a junior, and freshman Jen Daniels (Brigantine, NJ) also attained double-figure scoring for the Patriots, with 13 and 11 points, respectively. For the Tigers, Helen Rodan had 13 points, while Kelly Lemezs added a dozen. Ashley Gilmore pulled down a game-high 11 rebounds for Melbourne.

"We won, which is a good thing, and we had a lot of people score," said George Mason head coach Debbie Taneyhill. "But tonight, we basically wanted to see what we have in certain players and we also wanted to see what kind of rotations we have to work with this year. "We have some things to work on," said Taneyhill, who mentioned a tightening of her team's defense as a focus of improvement. "But from the standpoint of it being our first show of the season, we did OK."

Both teams got off to a slow start, with nearly five minutes elapsed off the game clock the score was just 5-4 Mason, but most likely for opposite reasons. For the Patriots, Saturday's game was their first true action of the year, while the Tigers were playing their 11th game in 16 days.

The tempo of the game improved, and the Patriots, spurred on in part by an 8-2 run, eventually mounted a 31-21 advantage by halftime.

Neamo scored seven points and grabbed five rebounds during the first half for Mason, while Osato Edobor-Osula (Queens, NY) nabbed six rebounds. Edobor-Osula finished the game with eight rebounds and a matching eight points.

Melbourne scored the first four points of the second half and went on an 8-4 run, cutting the score to 35-29, before Taneyhill called a timeout. After that break, the Patriots went on a nine-point spree and never looked back.

The largest lead of the game came at 12:51, when Daniels hit a three-pointer to put Mason up 50-32.

Melbourne whittled the lead back down to six points again, 54-48, with six minutes to go in the game, but mounting foul trouble for the Tigers allowed the Patriots to surge back ahead. Four Melbourne players fouled out the contest and Mason went 10-of-14 from the line during the game's final six minutes.

Free throws had a huge impact in the contest, as the Patriots went to the line more than twice as often as the Tigers. Mason converted on 23 of its 35 attempts, while Melbourne went 11-of-16.

George Mason opens the regular season Friday, Nov. 22 at Hartford, an NCAA Tournament team last season, while the Patriots home opener will be Wednesday, Dec. 4 against Howard.