Women’s offensive woes lead to two straight losses

In each of the 11 victories logged by women’s basketball this year, the result was a team effort. Everyone contributed in one way or another, either with assists or rebounds or baskets. 

Unfortunately, Saturday evening’s drubbing at the hands of the Lehigh Mountain Hawks was a team effort as well.

It was hard to find a bright spot in the game. The Leopards were 15-65 from the field for a 23.1 percent success rate, compared with the 36.5 percent posted by Lehigh. From three-point range, the story was even worse with Lafayette managing to sink only one of 17 attempts. Though the Leopards shot a respectable 75 percent from the free throw line, they took only 12 foul shots. Compare that with the Mountain Hawks’ 24 free-throw attempts and you begin to see how lopsided this game really was.

It wasn’t for lack of effort that the Leopards lost this one. Fighting hard on defense, they forced Lehigh to turn the ball over 25 times. Guard Maddie Peabody ‘15 had five steals. But Lehigh was tenacious too, forcing Lafayette into turnovers 21 times. 

Lehigh was dominant from the start, opening up an 11-2 lead before Alicia Manning ‘13 put an end to a series of empty possessions with a layup. Suddenly, Lafayette came to life. Guard Brya Freeland ‘15 and forward Kelly Loughney ‘14 sank two-pointers and the defense thwarted Lehigh as it hadn’t been able to do before. The deficit was cut to 16-8 at 10:05 in the first half.

But the momentum shift was short-lived. By the end of the first half, the Mountain Hawks had built a 13-point lead to make the score 29-16. From then on, Lehigh never looked back. They won 60-40, avenging a 68-52 loss to the Leopards earlier in the year.

Lafayette co-captain Danielle Fiacco ‘14 led the maroon and white attack with 13 points while co-captain Emily Homan ‘15 scored 10 and Peabody chipped in with seven. 

It was deja-vu on Feb.27 when the women lost to Colgate 39-37 and split the season series 1-1. 

They shot a season low 18.8 percent from the field on 9-48, and 2-14 from three-point range after not making a basket in the second half until 13 minutes in. The difference this time around was their opponent shot as poorly as they did. Colgate shot 23 percent from the field on 14-59 shots.  

 The squad also had 25 turnovers. 

Lafayette tied the game at 30 after Fiacco, Jamie O’Hare ’16, and Freeland netted six straight free throws. 

Free throws were their most consistent method of scoring on the night. Fiacco hit two that night with less than three minutes left to put the team up by one. 

But even with the late scoring, the team was not able to pull out a win after missing a couple of layups and sending Colgate to the line with 3.4 seconds left to seal the win. 

Coach Nolan felt the team lacked execution on both ends of the court. “We played strong on the defensive end but non existent on the offensive end. Our execution was not where it needs to be and we need to take a hard look on how to improve it moving forward,” said Nolan.