Rams remain undefeated at home, and 9-0 in conference play
PHOTO CREDIT: gorhody.com
Through the first half of conference play, URI women’s basketball remain the lone unbeaten team at the top of the Atlantic 10, recently stretching their winning run to nine with hard-fought wins over George Mason and St. Joseph’s.
After a lengthy weather delay kept the team in St. Bonaventure until late Monday afternoon, Tammi Reiss’s team had less than a day to recover before once again hitting the road en route to Fairfax, Virginia, where they would take on the George Mason Patriots.
Rhode Island started strong, going on a 7-0 run to take the early lead, but the Patriots came storming back with an 11-0 run of their own, holding Rhode Island to a five minute scoring drought before going into the second quarter with the 11-10 advantage.
Rhode Island started the second quarter strong using another 7-0 run to re-establish the lead, keeping the Patriots scoreless through the first 4:24. The Rams would eventually go into the half with the 22-17 lead in what was a sloppy half for both teams, who combined for 22 turnovers.
Rhode Island would continue to pull away to a 32-19 lead in the third quarter, but the home side once again rallied back through an 11-0 run to bring the game within 2, 32-30.
The teams continued to trade baskets back and forth through the fourth quarter, but Sayawni Lassiter eventually laid the final blow, going 5-for-6 from the line in the final minute to take the 57-53 win.
The win wasn’t always pretty, as the Rams allowed a season-high 22 turnovers on the night.
“Their [George Mason’s] constant pressure, especially on the ball screens, made us do something that’s uncharacteristic for us: making us rush our shots, rush our passes, and not being as sharp on stuff,” Lassiter said. “They just sped us up a little bit.”
“It wasn’t that we played poorly, I think they made us play poorly,” URI head coach Tammi Reiss said. “In the end, I was really happy with our late game execution.”
The Rams would return home a week later to take on Saint Joseph’s on National Girls and Women in Sports Day. It was the first meeting between these two teams since the first-round upset in the 2022 Atlantic 10 tournament, when the 7th-seeded Hawks took down the Rams 51-48 in Delaware.
The Rams would come out flying in this one, going on an 8-0 run to take the early lead. The Hawks struggled from the floor early on, going 0-10 to start the game, finishing the quarter shooting only 2-13.
Both teams struggled from deep early on, combining for 1-13 from beyond the arc with Sophie Phillips hitting the only 3-point effort in the first quarter. The Rams would eventually go into the second quarter with the 14-8 lead.
Despite the quick start, both teams struggled to find the basket as the game progressed. The Hawks shot just 28% from the floor, while Rhode Island weren’t much better at just over 30%.
Neither team was able to pull away in what was a defensive battle, with the deficit never exceeding nine points between the two teams. The back-and-forth fight saw Rhode Island hold onto the narrow lead for more than 39 minutes, before a pair of free throws from Tayla Brugler with seven seconds on the clock sent the game into overtime.
Five extra minutes wasn’t enough to separate the two teams, despite the Hawks taking their first lead of the game early on. URI would go on to re-take the lead, but a Mackenzie Smith layup would cancel out Mayé Touré’s effort to knot the game at 68.
Going into the second overtime period, both teams were still in search of the killer punch. The Hawks thought they had it when Katie Jekot buried a 3-point shot with just over four minutes to go, but an instant response from the Rams saw Lassiter and Emma Squires hit back-to-back threes that proved too much to overcome for St. Joe’s.
A couple trips to the line later, Rhody pulled through in an instant classic, 77-73.
“We stayed together, we were united, and we never got down,” Reiss said. “When they [St. Joe’s] hit that big three, and Emma [Squires] came down and hit that big three, when she hit that I said, ‘we’re gonna win the game.’”
Next up, the Rams hit the road once again on Saturday for a 7 p.m. tip-off against Davidson.