The starters built up a big 20 point lead and handed it off to the bench with 10 minutes left to secure the 16th straight victory for the Rhode Island College women’s basketball team (19-2, 10-0) in 70-43 win at UMass Boston (5-15, 2-8) last Saturday. The Anchorwomen are just one win away from tying the program record for victories in a season and continue to hold sole possession of first place in the Little East.
Following a 62-41 dismantling of then 17-3 Tufts University on Tuesday night, RIC did not let the big non-conference win get to them. Rhode Island College came out gunning for their sixteenth straight win early led by senior guard Cynthia Gaudet. She scored her 1,000th career point against Tufts and hit a three just minutes into the game to make it 5-0.
The Beacons stayed in the game for a little while but the Anchorwomen began pulling away after back-to-back layups from senior guard Stephanie Coro gave the squad their first double-digit lead at 24-14.
The Anchorwomen never looked back.
Coro had 12 points in the first 20 minutes and anchored the Anchorwomen in the first half as they took 41-29 lead. The senior then sparked a run to open up the second half by scoring a layup 0:36 in. From there, Gaudet, senior guard Nicole Girard and classmate center Rachel Riley all chipped in points during a 12-0 run to start the second.
UMass Boston’s leading scorer, Kirsten Morrison, stopped the bleeding with two of her 14 points to bring the score back to 53-31, but her efforts went unrewarded as the starters finished up their work.
Riley hit a jumper with 10:27 remaining and the Rhode Island College bench took over the responsibilities. Junior forward Alexia Vega and freshmen guards Katie Donovan and Cassie Novicky all scored in the final ten minutes, culminating in a 70-43 triumph. In the end, 10 different Anchorwomen had their hands in on the win.
The RIC defense was stellar as usual; holding UMB to 28 percent shooting, forcing 20 turnovers, and garnering 11 steals. Coro led all scorers with 16 points and Gaudet had 12. Junior forward Courtney Burns also had a day with 7 points and 9 rebounds.
“Every conference game is critical moving forward and we have to build on our second half today,” said RIC head coach Marcus Riley on the win. Every Little East game is certainly important but it hard to ignore the Anchorwomen’s pure dominance over the rest of the league.
The Anchorwomen will stay on the road, visiting UMass Dartmouth (14-7, 5-5) Tuesday and Southern Maine (16-5, 7-3) Saturday. In the previous meetings with those LEC opponents held at the Murray Center, Rhode Island College smashed the UMD Corsairs 63-23 and beat the SMU Huskies handedly 74-50.
