Ali Rinfrette’s junior season has seen her emerge as one of the best all-around players in the AMCC.

Her performance Monday night only added to her increasingly impressive resume.

Rinfrette led the Pitt-Bradford women to their sixth consecutive victory as the Lady Panthers defeated the D’Youville Spartans 86-75. The stat line for Rinfrette reads like one out of a video game: 38 points, nine rebounds, five assists and seven three-pointers.

“Yeah, she’s warming up,” coach Sean Brown said. “Kind of like the season, during the game it takes a few for her to get going. But she’s in midseason form right now and I expect her to continue this pace for the rest of the year.”

The Panthers needed every one of those points, because the Spartans, despite trailing for the majority of the game, had an impressive offensive performance of their own.

It wasn’t exactly a rollicking start to the contest. The first quarter of play saw more bodies on the floor than balls in the hoop. Sloppy ball-handling by both teams resulted in several early jump balls, and the score stood at just 3-3 through three-plus minutes of play.

UPB was finding plenty of shot opportunities, but were getting hardly any fortunate rolls. Their hustle on the defensive end, however, kept them from falling behind.

“We’re getting healthy, that’s a good thing,” Brown said. “Everybody’s giving max effort, so that even when we’re out of place, it’s not hurting us because we’re going 100 percent.”

A late 3 by Rinfrette gave UPB a 13-11 lead after 10 minutes. Both teams had poor shooting performances, as the Panthers shot 20 percent, while the Spartans weren’t much better at 25 percent.

Thankfully for the fans, the pace picked up considerably in the second quarter.

D’Youville’s Ali Cochrane began hitting some deep shots, one of which put the Spartans up 18-17 early in the frame. But that was quickly answered by an and-one by UPB’s Kaserra Owens. From that point on, the Panthers never trailed again.

Rinfrette began hitting three-pointers of her own, as she and Cochrane were the only players to find a lot of success offensively in the first half (Rinfrette had 18 points at the half, while Cochrane finished with 16).

A free throw late in the quarter by Darien Lantz (five points) put the Panthers up by double-digits, and they went into halftime with a 41-31 advantage.

Coach Brown’s halftime speech must have been a good one. UPB came out of the locker room with a vengeance, going on a 16-1 run to start the half.

The Panthers created all sorts of havoc on the defensive end, leading to turnovers which led to easy points, mostly coming by Rinfrette’s hand. UPB came into the contest averaging 25 turnovers per game during their current winning streak, and they forced that exact number against the Spartans.

“We knew that they were wearing down,” Brown said. “They can really shoot the basketball. Our closeouts were a little late, but we turned it up defensively and we got a few steals.”

After taking a 64-47 lead into the final period, the Panthers didn’t overthink things. They handed the ball off to their hottest player and let her take it from there, as Rinfrette’s threes halted any thoughts D’Youville had of a comeback.

While they never truly threatened to overtake UPB, the Spartans had a terrific fourth quarter offensively. They ended up going 10 of 14 from the field in the final period, as the strong showings of Cochrane (finishing with 21 points), CeDrice Howard (18 points, 8 rebounds) and Jean-Ann Korona (15 points, 14 rebounds) prevented the game from becoming a blowout.

However, the Panthers’ blitzkrieg to start the second half proved too much to overcome.

A strange stat of the game was that the two teams finished with the exact same shooting percentage of 35.8; the difference was that UPB did it on 29 of 81 shooting, while D’Youville went 24 of 67 from the field.

In addition to Rinfrette’s fantastic performance, UPB got solid outings from Owens (14 points, 11 rebounds) and Brittany Watts (nine points, eight rebounds).

The Panthers (8-5, 6-1) will travel to Medaille for a conference game Wednesday.

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Not to be outdone, the Pitt-Bradford men extended its own winning streak, as the Panthers defeated D’Youville in the second leg of Monday’s doubleheader 91-80.

The victory was the third straight win for the UPB men and gives them a winning record in conference play (4-3).

For as high-scoring as the contest was, there wasn’t as much excitement as you might expect. This was due in large part to the high volume of free throws, especially for the Panthers. UPB made a whopping 30 free throws on 37 attempts, while the Spartans made 20 of their own on 26 attempts.

“It seems like it’s about midnight right now with all the whistles and everybody shooting free throws,” UPB coach Britt Moore said with a smile.

“Early on they struggled with one-on-one D. They started hand checking and we got to the line. We shot 14 of 15 in the first half. You get those, those are easy points, and we’re a pretty good free throw-shooting team.”

Evan Greening recorded another double-double for the Panthers, finishing with 20 points and 19 rebounds. UPB also got great performances from Manny Welch (18 points) and Zacc Kinsey (13 points, five assists).

“Zacc’s been coming on since the New Year’s [Eve] game,” Moore said. “He got his first minutes and he’s run with it. He got hot from the three-point line. He’s a good athlete, a very quick player, tough to keep out of the lane. Manny also made a couple threes and everyone fed off that.”

Back-to-back three-pointers by Welch and Kinsey midway through the second half gave the Panthers a 75-60 lead that gave them some breathing room. Those long shots – plus some solid rebounding – sealed the victory for UPB.

For D’Youville, Jeremy VanDuluit finished with a game-high 28 points, while Jake Socha had a double-double of his own (15 points, 10 rebounds).

The Panthers (6-6, 4-3) will also be traveling to Medaille on Wednesday.

WOMEN’S GAME

D’YOUVILLE (75)

Cochrane 6-3-7-21, Howard 6-6-10-18, Korona 6-2-4-15, Smith 3-0-0-6, Evan 2-1-2-5, June 0-5-5-5, Campbell 1-0-0-3, Magee 0-2-4-2. Totals 24-19-32-75.

PITT-BRADFORD (86)

Rinfrette 11-9-13-38, Owens 6-1-1-14, Watts 4-1-4-9, Lantz 3-1-2-7, Colebert 2-2-2-7, Stringer 1-3-4-5, Ragin 1-1-2-3, Maciag 1-1-2-3, Guengerich 0-0-0-0, Collins 0-0-0-0, Isenberg 0-0-0-0. Totals 29-19-30-86.

Halftime: Pitt-Bradford 41-31

Three-point FGs: D’Youville – Cochrane 6, Korona 1, Campbell 1; Pitt-Bradford – Rinfrette 7, Owens 1, Colebert 1.

MEN’S GAME

D’YOUVILLE (80)

VanDuluitgaarden 6-14-16-28, Socha 6-3-4-15, VanAuken 5-1-1-12, Blask 4-2-2-11, Kunelius 2-0-0-6, Heard 2-0-2-4, Rosales 2-0-0-4, Salinas 0-0-1-0, Hartzog 0-0-0-0, Ward 0-0-0-0, Jorgensen 0-0-0-0, Nwaekeke 0-0-0-0. Totals 27-20-26-80.

PITT-BRADFORD (91)

Greening 6-8-10-20, Welch 6-1-2-18, Kinsey 3-4-4-13, Kelly-Perkins 3-5-6-12, Brockington 2-4-4-9, Niedermeyer 2-5-8-9, Harris 2-1-1-6, Atkinson 1-0-0-2, Tennies 0-2-2-2, Haenel 0-0-0-0, Sutton 0-0-0-0, Reigel 0-0-0-0. Totals 25-30-37-91.

Halftime: Pitt-Bradford 43-34

Three-point FGs: D’Youville – VanDuluitgaarden 2, Kunelius 2, Blask 1, VanAuken 1; Pitt-Bradford – Welch 5, Kinsey 3, Kelly-Perkins 1, Brockington 1, Harris 1.