Story by Peyton Doyle
PHILADELPHIA — For the first three quarters the Northeastern Huskies looked like they were going to advance to the semifinals of the CAA women’s basketball tournament and play the Delaware Blue Hens. The Huskies however, were unable to keep up as time ran out with a talented Towson Tigers team that scored 18 unanswered fourth quarter points to win 58-49.
While Northeastern imploded in the last 10 minutes of the matchup, Coach Bridgette Mitchell’s underdogs performed valiantly against the No. 3 team in the tournament, a team who had beaten them twice before in the regular season.
“I am really proud of my team, not just for tonight’s game but for the entire season,” Mitchell said.
The Huskies started off hot offensively but cooled rapidly as the first went on. Emily Clabrese had four points in the first three minutes and a Kendall Currence triple gave Northeastern a 7-3 lead early on. Towson got very little going for them when they had the ball in their hands, scoring just five points in the first seven minutes of the matchup. In the final five minutes of the quarter however, guard Kylie Korneygay-Lucas and forward Allie Kubek scored all seven of the Tigers points to tie the game at 12 going into the second quarter.
Even though the Husky offense stagnated to close out the first, they picked things up in the second quarter as Currence got things going just 17 seconds in with a pair of free throws. Claudia Soriano followed that trip to the charity stripe with a pullup jumper to give her team a four point lead.
As the quarter went on, the teams traded free throws and leads, causing them to be tied at 21 with two and a half minutes left in the half.
In the following minutes Northeastern’s senior guard Katie May took over the game, netting three field goals, including two from beyond the arch, to give her team an eight point lead entering halftime.
May’s dominance marched on into the second half as she scored another eight points in the opening five minutes of the third quarter, giving her team a 13 point lead. A succession of free throws brought the Tigers closer but a Currence layup to end the third had the Huskies up by 10 entering the final frame of the game.
But in the fourth quarter the wheels fell off.
It was the Huskies’ worst quarter of the season at the most inopportune time. They went a frigid 1-15 from the field and 0-7 from three. They turned the ball over four times.
Kubek and Sophomore guard Tarriyona Gary drilled two threes early in the quarter, just the second and third triples they had hit all night. Anissa Rivera then knocked down two mid-range jumpers, and a few moments later added a three that tore the roof off The Daskalakis Athletics Center. The Huskies simply could not get a stop when it mattered, and that killed their season.
“The momentum shifted. We were able to get stops in the first three quarters, we really did a great job of executing our game plan,” Mitchell said. “It’s a basketball game. There’s always going to be runs. They just got hot in the fourth and we weren’t able to cool them down.”
While the Huskies ended their conference season on a sour note, they performed much better than anyone outside the program predicted. They played with high energy every night and provided incredibly entertaining basketball for the fans right down to the end.
“We fought, we competed, we did things that no one thought we’d be able to do and we believed in ourselves and had a great season,” Mitchell said.
This game will end the Huskies’ season, but WRBB’s coverage won’t stop there. We’ll will be talking about the season in our weekly radio show Full Court Press, and will also continue providing coverage next season.