Williamstown, MA – Williams College (5-5) took on Wesleyan University (4-6) for a Little 3 matchup. Williams emerged victorious with a final score of 71-51. The Ephs out rebounded the Cardinals (46-41) and shot 40.0% from the three point line compared to the Cardinals' 23.1%. Both junior
Maddy Mandyck and first year
Arianna Gerig recorded double-doubles.
Maddy Mandyck finished with 12 points and 14 rebounds while
Arianna Gerig recorded 16 points and 10 rebounds. Senior
Maggie Meehan finished the game with 19 total points, pushing her career total to 1,003, as the Ephs head into the holiday break.
Reflecting on Maggie's accomplishment, Eph head coach
Pat Manning commented, "Maggie is the 19
th woman at Williams to score her 1,000
th, and she's in great company. I'm really thrilled for her. She took this last year off, so she could come back and have a senior season. For her to get this accomplishment is tremendous. All she wanted was to get the win. We hadn't talked about it, but the team wanted to do this for Maggie. You saw that in our team today and their unselfishness and wanting to win for each other."
Wesleyan opened the fourth quarter with a 7-2 run behind strong play from senior Maddie Clark that forced a Williams timeout at 7:23. After the timeout,
Arianna Gerig posted up on the block and stole the ball for a fast break layup to quickly score 4 points and help push the Ephs lead back to 10. From here Williams maintained control of the game, never letting the Cardinals within 12. With 4:32 remaining in the game, a jumper from senior
Maggie Meehan memorialized her 1,000th-career point.
In the first quarter, both teams opened with fast play running a transition offense. With 2:51 remaining, Wesleyan junior Maggie Lee secured an offensive rebound and dished to sophomore Emma Kiernan who converted the layup to take the lead 14-12. Senior Maddie Clark then put in a mid range jumper to push the Cardinal lead to 16-12. At the end of the quarter, Wesleyan held the lead.
At the beginning of the second quarter,
Maggie Meehan took over, demonstrating her ball handling skills and mid-range shot. However, the Cardinals responded with a couple deep three pointers. With 3:33 remaining in the quarter, Williams tightened up the defensive play, pressing Wesleyan full court and closing out on the three-point shot. Williams junior
Mia Holtze was the spark off the bench and led the Ephs with seven points in the quarter. Williams closed out the half with a 34-27 lead and a rebounding advantage of 5, 26-21.
"Mia was a spark off the bench, scoring and grabbing rebounds," noted coach Manning. That's what's exciting about our bench, you never know who's turn it is, and we've been stressing bench production. Today, we had 15 points off the bench which was big for us. Everyone brought their best today."
Opening the third quarter,
Maggie Meehan inched closer to her 1,000 career point mark, ending the quarter with 999. Williams played solid basketball, dominating the third quarter with a field goal shooting percentage of 50% to Wesleyan's 28.6%, extending the Eph lead to 54-43.
Regarding third quarter play, Manning said, "At halftime, we felt as though we weren't pushing the pace enough and needed to run and attack more in transition. After halftime, our defense picked us up and forced some turnovers and bad shots."
Closing out the fall semester, Williams' record is 5-5 after playing some great basketball. Manning noted, "We played the most challenging schedule I can remember in a long time. The losses we have were two 1-point losses, two 5-point losses, and a 4-point loss. Our opponents combined are 37-3. We are young and, in every game, and what we did in this first part of our season was tremendous for our young team. I'm proud of the growth that occurred and looking forward to the rest of the season."
The Ephs will have some time off for the holiday break and resume action on Wednesday, December 29
th in Nashville, Tennessee against Salisbury University at 3 PM EST.
