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Bronx, N.Y. – In front of nearly 2,500 local schoolchildren for its annual Field Trip Day, the Fordham women's basketball team rallied for a halftime lead and later withstood a late charge to defeat Davidson, 66-58, on Wednesday afternoon. With their sixth consecutive victory, the Rams improve to 13-4 on the year and 4-0 in Atlantic 10 action, while the Wildcats fall to 6-11 and 1-3, respectively.
"The more you win, the harder it gets," Head coach
Stephanie Gaitley said after securing her 597th career victory, "Davidson did a great job of making us work for everything. Today was the first step of playing with a target on our backs."
In what has become the norm, the Rams were led by another 20-point performance from redshirt freshman
Bre Cavanaugh and a double-double from senior forward
G'mrice Davis, who finished with 17 points and 12 rebounds. Junior guard
Lauren Holden, following a scoreless outing on Saturday, shot 6-of-10 from the field and 4-of-7 from downtown for 17 points.
Zara Jillings chipped in a game-high eight assists across 35 minutes off the bench, a new high for the team this season.
The first quarter a back-and-forth affair that Davidson eventually won, 15-13, as Sarah Donovan's layup cancelled out Jillings' game-tying three-pointer with under 30 seconds to play. Cavanaugh's layup at the 7:12 mark of the second quarter was that period's first points and knotted the game up again at 15-all. The Wildcats controlled the tempo for most of that frame, building up a six-point lead, their largest of the day, 29-23, with a 14-8 run capped by Kianna Speight's trey with 2:43 to play in the first half.
From that point on it was all Cavanaugh and Davis as Fordham used a 10-2 run over the next two-plus minutes to retake the lead and hold a slim 33-31 advantage heading into the break. The redshirt freshman got it started on the other end with a three-point play, then after
Halei Gillis blocked Speights' jumper, Davis came down with the board and was fouled, putting her at the line where she sank both attempts. Following a Katie Turner turnover, Davis missed two layups but grabbed both of her misses before dishing it to Cavanaugh to lay it in as she was fouled. That basket put Fordham ahead briefly prior to Justine Lyon tying the game up again with 30 seconds to play, but Jillings found Davis under the basket for a layup as the first half buzzer sounded.
The Rams steadily built up their lead over the next 15 minutes, getting up by as much as 14, 61-47, with 4:47 to play. After nearly two minutes of scoreless basketball, the Wildcats began a run that would see them cut the deficit all the way to just four, 62-58, with under a minute to play, using an 11-1 run as Fordham attempted just one shot over a two-plus minute span and committed six turnovers. Davidson notched five steals and hit 7-of-8 free throws during the run to create a tense finish at the Rose Hill Gym. Luckily for Fordham, the Wildcats didn't have much time to work with and free throws down the stretch from Davis and
Johanna Klug sealed the win.
It was just the third time this season in which an opponent has outrebounded Fordham, with the Wildcats winning the battle of the glass, 39-34. Davidson grabbed six offensive rebounds out of 13 in the fourth quarter alone. The Rams, however, outshot their opponents, 44.2% to 36.7%, and also hit 7-of-17 three-point attempts (41.2%), the second-highest mark of their campaign. Meanwhile, one of the top free-throw shooting teams in the conference and country matched a season-low mark of 59.1% from the line (when attempting five or more), hitting just 13-of-22 attempts, which is the same line Fordham had in the win over Bucknell.
Davidson scored 21 points off of Fordham's 17 turnovers, which were the most since the Rams had 20 against Pittsburgh on December 3
rd. Fordham also fouled 18 times, second-most this year, but did tally a season-high four blocks.
Still, the Rams have won six straight contests, four in conference play, and 12 of their last 14 after an 1-2 start to the season.
Fordham next travels to VCU on Sunday, January 14, with a 1 p.m. tipoff time.
