Box Score |
Highlights |
Postgame
Washington, D.C. – The Fordham women's basketball team found themselves down 11 points at halftime of Friday's WNIT first round match-up at Georgetown, with just 14 points on 24.1% shooting from the field and having missed all 12 shots from behind the arc. The Rams were a different team after the break, however, exploding for 27 points on 10-of-17 shooting, including six threes, in the third quarter to take the lead for good, holding on for a 60-49 victory over the Hoyas, finishing with a 46-24 second-half line.
With the result, the Rams move to 22-11 on the year, the fourth-most wins in program history. Fordham will play at Penn State on Sunday, March 19, at 2 p.m.
"Tonight's win was so satisfying because we faced many challenges - Kate [Kreslina] being out, being down at halftime, and playing a good team on the road," Head coach
Stephanie Gaitley said, "Tonight was super, super satisfying!"
Both
G'mrice Davis and
Mary Goulding tallied double-doubles, the 23
rd of the year for the former and second straight for the latter. Goulding posted a career-best 19 points on 6-of-9 shooting with 10 rebounds, five on the offensive glass, in 37 minutes, while Davis scored 16 and corralled 17 boards. Each added three assists. The win is Gaitley's
120th in six years in the Bronx and is the program's third
WNIT second round appearance in the last five years.
With All-Rookie selection
Kate Kreslina ruled out of the game due to illness, senior
Danielle Burns was re-inserted back into the starting lineup for the first time in eight games, a new lineup that hadn't been seen before this year of Davis, Goulding, Burns,
Hannah Missry, and
Lauren Holden.
The Rams could only muster six points in the first period, to Georgetown's 15, on 3-of-14 shooting. Goulding kicked the game off with a jumper off a nice series of passes but the offense sputtered after that. Missry picked up two quick fouls and sat down and the team missed its next six shots heading into the media timeout. It was Goulding again to break the funk, with a layup at the 3:32 mark, and Burns' jumper a minute later capped the scoring.
The second quarter was better, with the Rams outscoring the Hoyas, 8-4, and cutting the deficit to three, 17-14, midway through the period, but Georgetown ended the half on an 8-0 run to take a 25-14 lead into the break. Both teams shot an identical 4-of-15 from the floor in the quarter; Fordham's defense held its opponent without a point for the first four minutes and without another until their run started with three and a half minutes remaining. Davis collected her first points at the 5:05 mark and the Rams had zero free throw attempts in the half.
Holden, held scoreless in the first 20 minutes, knocked down a three on her team's first offensive possession in the second half, a sign of things to come. It didn't start right away, though. Dorothy Adomako answered immediately with a long-range effort of her own for the Hoyas' first double-digit lead of the game and Georgetown answered each time Davis scored over the next two minutes, the junior hitting one free throw and two layups. After nearly two minutes of silence at both ends, the Rams turned on the gas, scoring 19 points over the next six minutes.
Missry, held scoreless in six minutes due to foul trouble in the first half, drained a three from the far corner to cut the deficit by a third, 31-25, and on the next four consecutive offensive possessions, either Missry or Goulding hit a three-pointer, tying the score on two occasions and taking the outright lead for good on the former's final three of the run with 2:48 to play in the period, 37-34. The senior hit three, the sophomore two. Davis added four more points on a pair of jumpers later in the quarter as the Hoyas were held scoreless over the final three-plus minutes up until Adomako's buzzer-beating jumper, cutting into Fordham's lead, 41-36.
Fordham didn't stop there, scoring seven points over the first five minutes and holding Georgetown without a basket during that span, reaching a double figure lead for the first time. The Hoyas would eventually employ a full-court press with three minutes to go to instill a little chaos into the game, but the visitors wouldn't let their lead slip below six until the final whistle. Fordham, after hitting just 1-of-2 free throws over the first three quarters, hit 10-of-12 in the final frame.
The Rams ended up outshooting the Hoyas, 36.8% to 29.2%, and outrebounded their opponents for the ninth straight game, 45-40. Fordham shot 7-of-14 from downtown in the second half and held the Hoyas to 2-of-16 from deep overall, improving on its nationally top-20 ranked perimeter defense.
Missry hit 3-of-8 three-pointers on the evening, giving her 306 for her career and moving her past Nicole Levandusky (Xavier '01) for second-most all-time in Atlantic 10 history. She'll need 31 more, though, to catch Jessica Jenkins' all-time record.
Today's 27-point third quarter matched its third quarter in the come-from-behind win over Manhattan at home in mid-December and was second-most in a quarter this year behind a 29-point outburst in the fourth quarter against Davidson in early January, all wins.
Most of all, it was the quintessential Gaitley victory -- holding an opponent under 50 points in a win. Despite Saint Joseph's snapping a 38-game winning streak of such games earlier this season, the Rams are 50-5 in these instances under Coach Gaitley and 11-1 this year.
Fordham will travel to State College, Pa. tomorrow and play the Nittany Lions on Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m.
