The regular season ended in a disappointing loss for the Colgate women’s basketball team this past Saturday. The Raiders were defeated on the road by the Navy Midshipmen, 69-50.

The first few minutes turned out to be a good indication of the whole tempo of the game. The Mids jumped out to an eight-point lead in the first eight minutes by attacking Colgate’s defense from the perimeter by making four consecutive three-pointers. Colgate was not willing to give up however, as senior leader Katie Garman hit a three pointer of her own. Garman opened the door for two more quick Raider baskets, which cut the deficit to three.

From here, play went back and forth for a while, with Colgate and Navy exchanging baskets. Unfortunately, the Mids went on an 11-2 run late in the first half, making the score at the break 41-25.

“Navy went on a charge in the final minutes. They caused us to turn the ball over on offense. That forced us back in transition defense and their quick attack got us out of our defensive game plan,” Coach Pam Bass said about the late Navy run. “Moving forward we need to be consistent with our defensive fundamentals and game plan for 40 minutes.”

The second half was much of the same story for Raiders. Navy opened the half with two quick lay-ups to increase their lead to 20 points. The women were never able to fully recover from Navy’s late first half run, and the Mids were able to comfortably lead the whole second half by at least 16 points.

Despite the loss, Garmin had another solid night, leading the Colgate scorers with a team-high 10 points. Junior Sami Kozlowski contributed eight points in the loss, and first-year Jhazmine Lynch pulled down nine rebounds for the Raiders.

Shooting was the biggest disappointmen for the women in this game. The Raiders were shot 32.8 percent from the floor and just 60 percent from the charity stripe. The Colgate defense, on the other hand, allowed the Mids to shoot 46 percent, and also allowed their dominant perimeter shooting to take over the first half as they went 5-10 from behind the arc. With the help of Lynch however, Colgate was able to outrebound Navy, 44-34.

“We needed to take care of the ball better to help us have more possessions,” Coach Bass said. “We had 22 turnovers. That resulted not only in missed opportunities to score, but also disrupted our momentum and limited our opportunities to attack Navy so we did not get to the foul line. When we were able to push the tempo and run our transition and then attack four out one in, we were able to get some isolated looks inside. We got those continuously, but we needed to finish inside to better free up our outside game. Doing so allows us to have open threes and free up lanes for drives and pull-up jumpers.”

With the loss to Navy, the Raiders finished with a regular season record of 10-18 overall and 5-9 in the Patriot League, good for sixth in the Patriot League. The Raiders will seek revenge on Navy, the number three seed, this Saturday in Worcester, Massachusetts in the quarterfinals of the conference tournament.

Some great news for the women came in the form of the All-Patriot League Teams announcements on Sunday. First-year Jhazmine Lynch was the only player to represent Colgate in this regard. Lynch was named Patriot League Rookie of the Year, along with being named to the Patriot League All-Rookie Team. Lynch averaged 8.8 points, 3.2 assists and 1.5 steals per game this season. Lynch is the first Raider to ever receive the award for Rookie of the Year.