Robert Morris WBB Gains Momentum With Senior Day Victory Over Wright State

MOON TWP, Pa. — It has been a season full of ups-and-downs for the Robert Morris (18-11, 11-9) women’s basketball program but the Colonials managed to close out the regular season on the right side of things as they overcame a poor first quarter to beat Wright State (10-21, 6-14) by the score of 62-50.

The Colonials started the season with high exactions and ambitions, and while those goals are still out in front of them as they look towards the Horizon League Tournament, they have experienced the highest of highs and lowest of lows to this point of the season.

After starting the year 4-0, and league play 4-2, the Colonials suffered a handful of close losses, including one at the buzzer to first-place Green Bay, before stumbling down the stretch as losers of three of their last four before recovering with their win over the Raiders on Senior Day.

Despite the double-digit victory for Robert Morris, it was all Wright State early on as the Raiders capitalized on a near perfect first quarter to jump on the Colonials.

The Raiders opened the game up scorching hot offensively as they made four of their first five threes and shot 8-of-16 as a team in the first quarter. Couple the fast start for the Raiders with the Colonials inability to get a shot to fall and the visitors held a commanding 21-9 lead after the first 10 minutes.

Robert Morris used the second quarter to crawl itself out of the hole that it found itself in and used defense to do so. The Colonials limited the Raiders to just two field goals in the second quarter, albeit both of them coming from three-point range.

In turn, the offense begun to wake up as they started the quarter on a 12-0 run, fueled off of five-straight points from senior guard Noa Givon. The Raiders threes came in succession, immediately after the Colonials managed to tie things up at 21 a piece, which put them back ahead 27-21.

Givon cut the deficit down to four with her third field goal of the quarter which allowed Robert Morris to trail just 27-23 heading into halftime.

The Colonials were able to start the third quarter the same way that they did the second, on a long scoring run. Chandler McCabe’s group used buckets from five different players to not only start the second half on a 14-0 run, but it allowed them to jump ahead of the Raiders for good after Eva Levingston’s and-one put the team ahead 37-27 with 4:19 left in the third.

The Raiders tried their best in the final frame to battle back and managed to cut the once 10-point lead down to just six with under 40 seconds to go. When things could have gotten scary for the Colonials, it was a sneaky play from senior guard Jada Lee that all but sealed the win.

As the Raiders attempted to inbound the ball down just six, Lee snuck her way into the lane and got a steal before laying the ball up and in to give the Colonials a 58-50 lead with just 31 seconds left. The Colonials added a pair of Aislin Malcom free throws and a chefs kiss layup from Miriam Traore in the final seconds to defeat the Raiders.

Traore led all scorers with 19 points to go along with her four rebounds while Malcolm added 14 points in the victory. Bailey Kuhns added 8 points, Givon scored seven while both Lee and Levingston recorded 6 points each.

Prior to the start of the regular season finale, Robert Morris scoreboard watched the Purdue Fort-Wayne and Green Bay game as the Colonials needed the Phoenix to beat the Mastodons in order to have the chance to host a home game in the Horizon League Tournament.

That plan fell through when the Mastodons upset the Phoenix, making the outcome of the Colonials game important for confidence and momentum, not seeding as they were locked into the sixth seed regardless if they won or lost.

With that, Robert Morris will be on the road at Purdue Fort-Wayne to start the Horizon League Tournament on Wednesday evening. The Colonials split the regular season series with the Mastodons with a 74-64 win back in early January and a 60-46 loss which came at the end of January.