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WILLIAMSTOWN, MA.
– Amherst College (12-0) has steam rolled
through the opposition this season, sporting an average margin of
victory of 33 points in the first eleven games of the
season. Western Connecticut State lost by only
fourteen points to the Lord Jeffs on November 22, 2009, the closest
any team has come to defeating the second-ranked team in the
nation.
The Williams women's basketball team
(10-4) became another victim of the Amherst juggernaut, suffering a
75-51 loss at home against their archrivals and Little Three
foe.
“We approach every game the same, and we
prepare for Amherst as we would for any other opponent,” said
Manning. The bottom line is we did not do the little things
in today's game. Our defense and our
rebounding was a major disappointment. Amherst
is a great team, and they make you work for everything, but we
should have done more than we did today.”
Amherst opened up the game on a 7-0 run,
building an 11-2 margin just four and a half minutes into the
opening whistle. The Ephs
called a timeout to compose themselves. After the
timeout, Grace Rehnquist came off the bench to score five of the
next seven Ephs points to bring Williams back within five at 13-8
with 11:50 left on the clock.
With three minutes left in the half, Amherst
expanded their advantage to 28-15 after Jackie Renner scored a
bucket for two. The
Lord Jeffs grabbed their largest lead of the half at sixteen when
Shannon Finucane nailed a jumper from behind the arc to bring the
score to 31-15.
Rehnquist's hot shooting hand struck off
the ensuing inbounds play, scoring three. Jill
Greenberg drove inside for two to bring the lead back down to ten
points. The Ephs stayed within reach of the Lord Jeffs for
the remainder of the period. Williams played tough defense
against a formidable Amherst offense in the first half, keeping the
Lord Jeffs to 12-of-37 shooting (32.4%) from the
floor.
Despite being outrebounded 26-15, the Ephs
headed to the locker room down by just ten points,
33-23. While Williams stayed close to Amherst
for the first twenty minutes, they could never put together a run
to challenge the Lord Jeffs lead and overcome their
opponents.
“I felt okay with our performance at
halftime,” said Williams' head coach Pat Manning. "We
cut the lead to ten, and we had still missed a bunch of open shots
so I thought we were in a good place. We needed
to do a better job on the boards in the second half, but everything
we talked about at halftime didn't
happen.”
Chances for the upset victory began to
crumble, as Amherst jumped out to a 6-0 run to open play in the
second half. With the
score at 39-23 with 17:59 on the clock, Williams couldn't
keep up with Amherst and the Lord Jeffs quickly pulled
away. Amherst led by as many as twenty-eight
points with 8:58 left in the game, and closed out the game ahead by
twenty-four, 75-51.
Amherst's Jaclyn Daigneault led all
scorers with 23 points, and was just one rebound short of a
double-double.
Teammate Renner finished with a successful double-double with 11
points and 10
boards, while Caroline Stedman scored 12
points. Sarah Leyman contributed 10 points and 8
rebounds.
Rehnquist led the Ephs offensive efforts with
14 points. Chessie
Jackson added 9 points and 6 boards, while Taylor Shea scored 8
points and grabbed 6 rebounds. Jennie Harding
and Claire Baecher each added 7 points.
“I was happy with the efforts of our
first-years,” said Manning. “They came out and played
hard. Jennie [Harding], Grace [Rehnquist], and
Claire [Baecher] were all big factors for us in today's
game.”
The Ephs will look to rebound against another
Little Three and conference opponent on Tuesday against
Wesleyan. Game time
is set for 7:30 p.m. in Chandler Gymnasium.
