By Andrew Knowlton, County Times
A 57-46 win over Rowan University gave the St. Mary's College women's basketball team a perfect 3-0 record last Tuesday, but the team could not extend the winning streak to four, as they lost to McDaniel College 74-49 five days later on the road.
The Seahawks kept up with McDaniel's tough offense early, tying the game twice and switching the lead with them five times. But poor shooting hurt the Seahawks in the rest of the half as they made just three of 18 shots from the field. By the end of the half, the Seahawks had dug themselves a 40-22 deficit they were unable to cut during the rest of the game.
McDaniel's guard Katy Powell scored 14 points in the game, and helped the Green Terror spark a 17-0 run in the second half. McDaniel also spread the ball well, with points scored by twelve other players.
"We had a few more shooters to identify than the previous three teams and things like that kind of escaped us when we were doing them well earlier," head coach Nan Hambrose said.
Allie Scott was the Seahawks lead scorer, contributing 14 points and pulling down seven rebounds in the loss. Guard Amanda Ballute scored 11 points and Stephanie Saint-Aubin added 10.
Although the Seahawks improved their shooting percentage in the second half (47.8 percent), they took fewer shots than in the first half and also struggled from the free throw line going 3-for-9.
"They pressed us, we expected them to press us, we broke the press very well, but their halfcourt defense was pretty pesky," Hambrose said. "We just got away from doing the things that helped us get to 3-0 before that day. We didn't get in a good triple threat position, we weren't able to execute our offenses really well, we let them take us out of some stuff with their aggressive defense, which we didn't let the previous three opponents do."
Defensively, the Seahawks were unable to stop McDaniel's strong perimeter shooting. The Green Terror knocked down 11 out of 21 three point attempts in the game, a program record.
"They're a good team, they're deeper obviously, everybody in the world's deeper than us, but they were throwing a lot of players in and out," Hambrose said. "Kids that hadn't shot well for them from perimeter against our zone were shooting well."
St. Mary's found more success against Rowan as they won their third straight home game earlier that week, holding the Profs to just 46 points and winning the game by 11.
The Seahawks didn't have the same defensive problems as they suffered against McDaniel. They forced Rowan to turn the ball over 31 times in the game and repeatedly turned the Profs mistakes into scoring opportunities.
Guard Megan Uglik had a team-high 17 points, which included two consecutive buckets with less than eight minutes remaining in the first half to take the lead.
The Seahawks hung onto the lead from there and were able to slow down Rowan shooting guard Kristina Wallace, who buried three of four shots from downtown in the first half.
"She really hurt us," Hambrose said of Wallace. "If you look at the first half scores, they had 22 points and 11 of them came from her. We just did a better job finding where she was."
St. Mary's brought their 3-1 record to Catholic University last night for their first Capital Athletic Conference contest of the season.
"I think any conference game is very important. We're in a tough conference. We know that," Hambrose said before the game. "But I'd rather play in a league like ours where we're gonna' duke it out with everybody every night than walk all over a few people 'cause that's not gonna' happen in our conference."
The Cardinals were coming off a two game losing streak before taking the court against the Seahawks.
The last time these two teams met, St. Mary's came away with a 70-64 home-court victory.
Results of last night's game were unavailable when the County Times went to press.