BENNINGTON, Vt. – The visiting Wheelock College women's basketball squad grabbed a 58-47 New England Collegiate Conference (NECC) victory over Southern Vermont College Saturday afternoon at the Mountaineer Athletic Center.
The Wildcats took a 24-20 edge into the locker room, and they were able to prevent SVC from making a comeback in the fourth quarter while connecting at the free throw line for the league victory.
Next up for both teams are Tuesday night games which will serve as their final Conference contests before the winter break; Southern Vermont (2-8, 1-2 NECC) heads to Becker College for a 6 p.m. showdown while Wheelock (2-4, 2-0 NECC) hosts Newbury College at 7:30 p.m.
SVC was led offensively by junior Maddy Main (Bennington, Vt.) who had a game-high 20 points to go with her seven rebounds and two assists, and sophomore Dani Biggers (Broadalbin, N.Y.) pulled down a team-best 12 boards while scoring nine points on the afternoon. Sophomore Taylor Mallett (Berwick, Maine) had seven points and five helpers for the Mountaineers as freshman Brenna Hudson (Malone, N.Y.) registered eight points and five rebounds in the effort.
WC senior Katie Walsh (East Islip, N.Y.)—who entered the game with the 10th most double-doubles (5) in NCAA Division III—tallied another one as she totaled 10 points and a game-high 18 rebounds. Classmate Emma Siver (Colchester, Conn.) notched a team-leading 15 points while adding five assists to her line, and fellow senior Gaby Haywood (Longmeadow, Mass.) pitched in with 13 points and four rebounds. Freshman Alivia Damper (Reston, Va.) also reached double figures with 12 points, and she also put up five boards, three assists, and a pair of steals.
Wheelock connected on 36.8 percent (21-57) of its field goal attempts for the day while Southern Vermont finished at a 30.5 percent (18-59) clip from the floor. The Wildcats grabbed a slim 39-38 edge on the glass, and both teams committed 13 turnovers throughout the contest. A pair of difference makers, however, was that WC had a 15-9 upper hand in points off turnovers while hitting 11 free throws to the Mountaineers' five.
After Biggers drilled a three and Mallett got a jumper to go, Wheelock came back with 10 unanswered points—highlighted by back-to-back triples from Siver and Damper—to take the lead. Main ended that stretch with a nice floater in the lane before she sent home a shot from downtown with 2:27 to go in the first. Neither team would score the rest of the way for Wheelock to take its 15-12 advantage into the second.
Damper grabbed an offensive board and found junior Sarah Tobin (Salisbury, Mass.) outside the perimeter for a trey in the next stanza, but SVC came back with the next two buckets—the second seeing Hudson kick it out to Biggers for a triple—for the deficit to get cut down to one. Main went 1-2 from the line to tie it at 20-20 with 2:16 left in the half—only to see Wheelock get the last two buckets before the break to go into the locker room on top by four.
After a 3-pointer early in the third frame by Mountaineer junior captain Kayla Emmi (Syracuse, N.Y.) made it a one-possession game, Damper dropped consecutive scores to put her team ahead 32-25. Another six-straight Wildcat points put the separation into double digits, but SVC came back with a 6-0 run—capped by a Main trey from the left wing—to make it just a 38-33 WC edge. Damper answered right away with a three of her own, however, for the visitors to go into the final period with an eight-point cushion.
Walsh—a player who started Saturday with an average of 20.8 points per game to rank 19th in all of DIII—only had five points entering the fourth quarter. She would get the first three of the frame, however, to start an 8-2 spurt which put the Wildcats in front by 14. Biggers would connect on another from beyond the arc for SVC to score the next five, but scoring would go back-and-forth the rest of the way as Wheelock was able to make all seven of its free throws in the final 5:50 of the game to stay ahead and close out the win.
– #LetsGoSVC –