For the majority of the first half, the St. Bonaventure women’s basketball team had Duquesne on legitimate upset alert.
The Bonnies weren’t just playing passable ball; they had the lead twice in the second quarter and were tied with 2:22 to play until halftime before Duquesne went on an 8-0 run going into the locker rooms.
That run was a game-clinching one for the Dukes, who never relinquished the lead and won 73-59. They improved to 18-3, 8-0 in the Atlantic 10, while the Bonnies fell to 7-15, 2-7 in league play.
A-10 Player of the Year candidate Chassidy Omogrosso scored 20 points on 8-of-13 shooting, including four three-pointers, and also dished out six assists to lead Duquesne. Omogrosso had help from backcourt mate Julijana Vojinovic, who dropped 12 points, as well as freshman Libby Bazelak and junior Kadri-Ann Lass, who each went for 11. Lass also grabbed 12 rebounds and blocked three shots, both team highs.
Bona’s objective was to slow down a team that is keen on running the floor and scoring at rapid paces. The Dukes didn’t exactly light up the box score, but they shot 51 percent and spread the floor enough that everyone on the floor was a threat and an oft-anemic SBU offense couldn’t keep up.
“We’re getting closer,” Bonnies coach Jesse Fleming assessed. “We spread the floor, I thought we attacked well, I think we controlled the tempo for a good amount of the first half. We took care of (the ball)… we made some shots… We are getting in the right direction.”
The most encouraging sign for Bona as far as shot-making goes was Mckenna Maycock’s day. In her second game back from the knee injury that sidelined her for over a month, Maycock dropped 16 points on an efficient 7-of-12 shooting clip. The Randolph native knocked down a three in each half and scored 11 of her points in the second. She also grabbed four rebounds and did not commit a turnover or foul in in 27 minutes of action.
“She stepped back up and we saw some flashes of what Mckenna was before she got hurt,” Fleming said. “Made some shots, she attacked the basket a little bit, she scored at three levels at times…
“We’re just a completely different team (with her on the court). There’s just more people that you have to guard and worry about, and that’s why I’m encouraged.”
Along with Maycock’s double-digit performance, Arielle Harvey and Mariah Ruff each tallied 14 points for the Bonnies. Harvey made four threes, while Ruff hit six free throws to brighten a 3-of-10 output from the floor.
Ruff was being face-guarded, with a lot of attention paid to her. Despite the 30 percent field goal percentage, she dished out seven assists to just two turnovers, a good assist-to-turnover ratio.
“Those shots that she took were pretty contested,” Fleming noted. “There were a lot of people dedicated to Mar today, so that really freed up other things. She made good decisions, she found people. I thought she played really well no matter what she shot, and I thought it was huge for her to have assists. That’s why we played pretty well offensively today.
Lass served the Bonnies a headache or two down low, redirecting three shots and contesting other would-be layups hard. Bona missed 10 of its 19 layup attempts, a mark that weighed heavily on the final stat line.
“We talked about, you can’t drive at her,” Fleming said of Lass. “You’ve gotta pull up before (or) you’ve gotta make the extra pass. Their perimeter ‘D,’ they don’t have elite defenders. I think Duquesne wants to outscore you and they want to channel you to the shot blocker. I thought the first three layups, they got changed because the shot-blocking was there. And then after we started to pull up and hit our teammates, that’s when we made some threes because they started to collapse.”
If SBU is going to piece together an end-of-season run with Maycock back in the fold, the squad received many lessons from Duquesne on how to achieve it.
