Ephs Advance to Tip-Off Championship
In the nightcap of the Williams Tip-Off Tournament, the host Ephs (1-0) downed the Wildcats from Bay Path (0-1) by a final score of 88-13. Every Eph who played scored at least two points. The Ephs were led by Maggie Miller who scored 10 points. By the time the Wildcats got their first points on the board, the Ephs had already opened up a 42-point lead.
"It was painful. Nobody wants to play a game like that," Eph Head Coach Pat Manning said afterward. Regardless, Manning ws certain to point out that the game offered her young team a chance to gain experience: "It was a day for us to work on our set plays, that's what the whole second half was about," she said. "I have 10 new players on this team so we needed to do that; we needed to run through to get all the kinks out to get ready for tomorrow."
The game quickly degenerated into a laugher as the shorthanded and overmatched team from Bay Path simply could not keep up with the Willams. The Wildcats committed 15 turnovers in their first half alone; combined with the Ephs' strong transition offense and complete domination of the boards, that statistic goes a long way toward explaining exactly how it was that by the time Bay Path got on the board with a 3-pointer from Meaghan Cauley (South Hadley, MA), Williams had already scored 42 points of its own.
When asked if there was any one facet that his team sturggle with tonight, Wildcat Head Coach Dusty Hoyt candidly joked, "Virtually everything. We struggled with Williams."
The Ephs employed three 5-women units on the night, with each unit playing for fine minute stretches before deferring to one of the other two. The starting unit consisted of junior Kerri McMahon, sophomore Colleen Hession, senior Bridget McDonough, senior Sarah Dickens, and first-year Meghan O'Malley. Manning praised the effort of all five after the game, saying that the team executed particularly well on the defensive end.
"We really take a lot of pride in our defense," Manning said, "they weren't able to get into any sort of offensive flow."
Though he would not go so far as to say it was the difference in the game, Hoyt made mention of the fact that the Wildcats were without a sizeable portion of their team, including team leader Michelle Frett (Groveton, NH) who is out with an injury.
"Basically we were just real shorthanded," said Hoyt, who likened tonight's game to a contest between Williams and UConn, the top-ranked team among Div. I schools. "We probably had about seven to 10 kids who were going to be here who didn't make it for one reason or another."
Caulet led the way for Bay Path with 10 points and six rebounds. Bay Path will face Albertus Magnus in the consolation game Sunday, while Williams College will meet Wellesley. The opener is set to start at 1 p.m., with the championship game beginning at 3.
