Women’s Basketball Takes Two-Game Hit

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Despite the many offensive and defensive contributions by Senior Krista Moser over the weekend, the Raiders failed to record wins in their games against Lafayette or American Uni­versities. Colgate lost 65-42 to Lafayette on the road and 69-49 with the home court advantage against American University. Moser led the weekend with 18 points and 17 rebounds after both competitions and was followed by classmate Sami Kozlowski and rookie Lauryn Kobiela.

Colgate took their first hit in the opening minutes of the game when Lafayette went on a 4-0 scoring run. The Raiders did not hit the scoreboard until the 16:01 with their own two points, but the Leopards responded with yet another 4-0 run to improve their lead to 8-2. As the clock counted down, the teams traded offensive success, but Lafayette was ultimately able to augment the gap to 13 points. In the fi­nal minutes of the half, Lafayette hand handily taken a lofty lead at 44-28 to the dismay of the struggling Raiders defense.

In the second half, the Leopards came out to another explosive start and begun play with a devastating 9-0 run to bring the score to 53-28. The Raiders were not able to respond until a lone free throw tallied up a point.

Midway through the half, the Leopards sud­denly began to struggle. Both the offense and defense let up significantly and allowed the Raiders to go on their own 8-0 scoring spree to chip away at the standing deficit. Disappoint­ingly, despite their late comeback, the Raid­ers were unable to close the 28-point gap and Lafayette closed the deal at 65-42.

“I give credit to Lafayette,” stated head coach Pamela Bass. “They took us out of our game plan on both ends of the floor. Once we made adjustments, we simply couldn’t finish.”

In the end, Colgate had a 26.4 field goal per­centage, going 11-28 in the first half and 3-25 in the second. The Leopards clearly dominated with their 45.3 field goal percentage.

The Raiders were sadly not comforted by their return home to the arctic to host their second Patriot League opponent of the week, American University.

Colgate did show some promise when a pair of free throws in the first minute marked up the score 2-0. American quickly an­swered back with a jumper and quick steal to reverse the score 4-2 in their favor. The Eagles took this charge and went running, taking a 7-4 advantage at the 17-minute mark.

The Raiders, after their rough game against Lafayette, refused to surrender and responded to the American run by tying the score at nine only minutes later. In the next minutes, the teams traded basket for basket, but Colgate came out on top with a 17-13 lead over the Eagles. As the half came to a close, the Raid­ers had faith that they had secured the lead, but an offensive explosion by American brought the score to 38-21 for the Eagles just as time ran out.

The second half followed much in the pat­tern of the first, with the Raiders crossing the scoring threshold first with a clean jumper. However, the Eagles still carried enough mo­mentum from the first half to answer with a 5-0 run to extend the Colgate deficit to 20 points. The competition heated up as the Raid­ers fought back against the fiery American of­fense. By thte 11:04 mark, American still held a 54-35 lead despite some key defensive plays made at the Colgate basket. Unfortunately, the Raiders were unable to close the gap for the second time in the week and fell to the Eagles 69-49.

“American had a great shooting night,” commented Bass. “We did a better job on the boards but we still need to focus on our finish.”

Colgate had a 34.0 field goal percentage, going 10-23 in the first half and 18-53 in the second. The team shot 42.9 percent from the charity stripe.

The Raiders will make another attempt at victory when they hit the road to play Bucknell on February 19 and Holy Cross the following Wednesday. Both match-ups are slated for a 7:00 p.m. tip off.