Women's Basketball Tops Southern Vermont

BENNINGTON, Vt. — After trailing at halftime, the Elms College women's basketball team rallied to a 75-63 win over Southern Vermont College in New England Collegiate Conference (NECC) play at the Mountaineer Athletic Center Tuesday evening.

The Blazers improve to 16-8 on the season, 14-3 against the league, while SVC moves to 14-9 overall and 12-4 in Conference action. 

Mountaineer junior Sarah McDonald (Cohoes, New York) led all players with 21 points while adding a team-best 13 rebounds for her third double-double of the season. Classmate and captain Amber Flagg (Windsor, Connecticut) followed with 15 points, four assists and three steals, and fellow juniorTurquoia Johnson (Montgomery Village, Maryland) notched her fourth double-double with 14 points and another 13 boards. McDonald tallied three blocks on the night while Johnson had two and a pair of assists.

Five Blazers hit double digits in points with two of them registering double-doubles of their own. EC sophomore Alexandra Marques (Newington, Connecticut) pulled down a game-high 17 rebounds to go with her 10 points, three steals and two blocks, and senior JC Pickett (Chicopee, Massachusetts) scored 15 points while grabbing 15 boards. Freshman Mackenzie Larochelle(Chicopee, Massachusetts) notched 15 points off the Elms bench while dishing out four assists, and junior Mariah Brown (Windsor Locks, Connecticut) scored 10 points to go with five rebounds and a game-high six assists. Senior Gianna Youngblood (Lakeville, Massachusetts) provided another 10 points as a reserve in the win.

Elms shot much better in the second half to finish with a 37.3 field goal percentage (28-75) on the night while Southern Vermont was held to a 30.7 percent clip (23-75). EC took a 21-15 edge on points off turnovers while also outscoring SVC 34-30 from the paint.

Scoring was plentiful early on as the teams traded baskets from the start. Picket sunk a pair of jumpers about 10 feet from the hoop on the right baseline to put her team up 6-4, and LaRochelle then followed with a floater through the lane to make it 10-6. SVC would stay close with buckets of its own including a nice shot fake by McDonald who then drove to the hoop and laid it off the glass for the easy two. Her basket started an 8-2 Southern Vermont run that concluded with Johnson blocking a Blazer shot, grabbing the rebound and finding Flagg in transition for the 18-14 lead.

Elms would not be behind for long, however, as the visitors scored six unanswered points to go back on top; Brown tallied the last of those points, finishing a spin-and-shoot for the advantage. Once again, the teams traded baskets as the lead changed hands five times over the next six minutes before a Flagg triple from the top of the arc put the Mountaineers in front 28-24. Johnson notched the last four points of the half for her team, two coming on a jumper at the top of the key to finish the scoring for the period and send SVC to the locker room with a 32-27 lead.

After EC scored on its opening possession of the second, Southern Vermont answered when Flagg found McDonald down low with a nice over-the-top pass to the open junior; but that's when the Blazers scored six straight points to take a 35-34 lead. The squads continued to battle with neither side able to hold on to a lead until Elms broke the game open with a big surge. Down 45-42, Marques scored three straight points to spark a 17-2 EC run; eight points of that stretch came from the free throw line as the Mountaineers found themselves in foul trouble, putting the Blazers in the bonus at the 10:22 mark of the second half.

SVC was able to cut its deficit to single digits when a pair of Johnson free throws made it 59-51 in favor of Elms with 6:43 to play, but EC made the most of its trips to the charity stripe to stay out in front. The Blazers would eventually take their biggest lead of the night at 73-56 on a three-pointer by LaRochelle, and they closed out the 75-63 victory for the season sweep of Southern Vermont.

Elms concludes the regular season on Saturday with a 1 p.m. tip-off at home against Bay Path University on Senior Day. The Mountaineers are next slated to play on Thursday, hosting Newbury College for an 8 p.m. NECC contest that was rescheduled from January 27.