The women’s basketball team saw its four-game winning streak snapped at the hands of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, falling 71-60 in wire-to-wire fashion on Sunday afternoon.
NJIT (7-3 overall) entered the game without leading scorer junior guard Marissa Gingrich but still had dominant individual performances to overpower the Leopards (4-4 overall), including the program’s third-ever triple-double and a 30-point outing.
“We have to know who teams’ leading scorers are, know who they’re trying to get the ball to and take that away,” junior guard Teresa Kiewiet said. “We just gave them too many open looks and too many second-chance points.”
The second chance opportunities piled on early for the Highlanders, tallying six offensive rebounds in the game’s first possession. While the Maroon and White eventually got a stop on the sequence — courtesy of a steal from freshman guard Haylie Adamski — momentum still favored the hosts, who rallied off a trio of three-pointers to take an early 9-2 lead.
“We need to limit teams’ offensive rebounds,” Kiewiet said. “I think it’s just like playing with a higher level of physicality and responding when teams bring the heat.”
Head coach Kia Damon-Olson answered by giving freshman forward Maddison Krug increased minutes, tallying 25 minutes and securing a team high 13 rebounds on the contest.
“It just came down to boxing out and going after the ball,” Krug said. “We knew that they were going to be aggressive, so it was just maintaining our positioning and making sure we pursued the glass.”
While the Highlanders kept raining on triples, Kiewiet’s off-the-dribble scoring helped keep the Leopards afloat in the first quarter. A scoring spurt from senior guard Sauda Ntaconayigize and continued offensive attack from Kiewiet boosted the Maroon and White offense in the second quarter, but the defense continued to give up open threes, going into halftime down 40-30.
The 3-point line was one of the keys to the game, with the hosts shooting a blistering 11-of-25 from downtown compared to the measly 3-of-14 outing from the Leopards.
“There’s going to be games where we’re not able to make shots, and we have to adjust,” sophomore guard Talia Zurinskas said. “Not that I couldn’t get the people the ball, but I didn’t really see it as much because NJIT was playing really aggressive, but definitely next game, trying to get people the ball more.”
Junior forward Tasha Chudy and Kiewiet scored a pair of buckets to open the quarter, cutting the lead back to single digits. Defensively, the Leopards switched to a zone look, slowing down the Highlanders early in the second half.
“Man to man wasn’t necessarily the best execution,” Krug said. “I think we were trying to find something. I think that we did execute it well, but we obviously can’t rely on that every time.”
Some sloppy turnovers and continued struggles from the perimeter hindered the Leopards, entering the fourth quarter down 53-43.
Early in the fourth quarter, however, the Maroon and White seemed to find its footing offensively, with a burst of offense from Zurinskas — including a high-arcing three-pointer off a handoff from Chudy — cutting the deficit to just four points.
“Credit to Talia,” Kiewiet said. “She really kept us in it and was able to bring us back quite a few times there by making some tough shots.”
The Highlanders quickly responded, immediately going on a 9-0 run to effectively put the game away.
“We weren’t able to get a score and then a stop consecutively, and that kind of killed the momentum that we were building,” Kiewiet said.
Kiewiet led the Leopards with 23 points on 8-of-15 shooting, earning Patriot League Player of the Week.
Returning to action on Thursday night, the Leopards hit the road again to take on Farleigh Dickinson University (5-3 overall).