On Friday night, the women's basketball team of La Roche University took to Hope College to compete in round one of the NCAA Division III tournament. After hanging with a team that was predicted by analysts to go to the sweet sixteen, the Redhawks unfortunately could not hang on in the final quarter.
The Redhawks came out strong and were only down by two going into the second period. Ayanna Mazyck had eight of her 16 total points in the first quarter.
LRU had what the commentators described as "scrappy defense", and that defense was what was keeping them in the game. The team wasn't just playing good offense, but also forcing stops at the most opportune points, leading them to go into halftime down just six points; a two possession game.
The Redhawk defense forced a normally cool and calm Flying Dutch team into 12 turnovers. La Roche took those hard earned turnovers and turned them into 12 points.
In the third period, LRU still stayed hand in hand with the top ranked Flying Dutch, but things were starting to slip. Danajah Sanders took it upon her own shoulders to push through the scoring block and went on an 8-0 run by herself. She collected a total of 18 points in the contest. Sanders also collected the highest amount of rebounds with five, and steals with three.
In the fourth quarter is where the Redhawk team started to come apart. A combination of miscommunication of switches, straying away from the game plan, and running out of gas was what led Hope to break the gates wide open, and a game that had never gone beyond a 10 point lead, suddenly had the Redhawks losing by 32 points.
Hope went on to defeat La Roche 86-54.