Marietta College women fall in season-opener
Trending
It was a sluggish beginning and tough finish for the Marietta College Pioneers in Tuesday night's season opener at Ban Johnson Arena against the Washington and Jefferson Presidents.
The Pioneers fell behind early, rallied to make things interesting and then faded down the stretch, as the Presidents pulled away to a 67-53 victory.
"It wasn't a very good start for us for sure and we didn't do a very good job on stuff that we are working on all the time." said MC head coach Kole Vivian. "We just weren't as united as we wanted to be."
The Pioneers struggled all game long to contain Washington and Jefferson sophomores Bryn Bezjak, Meghan Dryburgh and Adalynn Cherry, as the trio combined for 55 of the President points.
W&J came out clicking on all cylinders as they quickly built an 18-6 lead with less than a minute to play in the first quarter.
Marietta began to show some life as they scored the final five points of the opening period on free throws by Devin Hefner and Makenzie Wilson and a three-pointer by Olivia Gribble.
The Presidents went right back to work to open the second period as they increased their lead to 13 points on a pair of buckets by Bezjak midway through the quarter before the Pio's played perhaps their best stretch of basketball to get right back into it.
A pair of freebies by Kelly Levering, a triple by sophomore Ally Grake and a two-pointer by Camille Cummins off of a Grake assist quickly closed the lead to six.
Bezjak briefly slowed the Marietta momentum with a two-pointer but minutes later the Pioneers whittled the lead to five on buckets by Erin Hahn and Devin Heffner.
Dryburgh and Hahn each canned a pair of free throws to close out the half to send the number 19th ranked Pioneers to the locker room trailing 34-29.
"We showed some fight coming back there and got within striking distance." said Vivian. "We just never seemed to be able to overcome that bad start."
Marietta began the second half with much more energy than they displayed in the first half and they quickly closed to within three on a Hefner bucket, but the Presidents responded with a 3-pointer by Dryburgh and a two-pointer by Sarah Berardelli to stretch the lead back to six.
The Pioneers needed a spark in the worst wa,y and they got one off the bench from sophomore Paige Tolson.
Tolson's bucket with 5:42 left in the third cut the lead to four, and she followed that up by making one-of-two at the charity stripe.
Once again, Dryburgh came up with a clutch bucket for the Presidents, but Tolson answered with a three-pointer and just like that the Pioneers were down by just two with a little more than four minutes to play in the third.
"She (Tolson) has grown up a lot over the past year and I was really proud of her effort tonight," said Vivian of the Federal Hocking graduate. "She didn't get to play a whole lot last year but she has come out all in this year and she's turning into a really good leader for us."
The next minute would prove to be the pivotal one for the Presidents as they scored eight points in less than a minute to push their lead back to double digits at 51-41.
Dryburgh's triple got things started and after a driving lay-up by Bezjak, Berardelli completed an old-fashioned three-point play.
Marietta found a way to trim the lead back to seven before the end of the third but managed to score just four points in the final quarter as the Presidents pulled a way to the win.
Bezjak led all scorers with 19 points while also hauling down eight rebounds while Dryburgh added 18 points to go along with a game-high 13 boards.
Adalynn Cherry added 18 points of her own including four from behind the three-point line for a team that made a solid 9-0f-20 shot attempts from behind the arc.
Marietta was led by Tolson who tossed in 11 points off the bench while Heffner, Hahn and Wilson added nine , eight and seven points, respectively.
The Pioneers connected on just 29 percent of their shot attempts (20-69) despite out-rebounding the Presidents, 49-39.
Vivian hopes the loss will serve as a bit of a wake up call for his team who got off to a great start last year.
"Last year, we didn't lose our first game until December 12th so now we kind of have to figure some things out and hopefully we can bounce back on the road," said Vivian. "There's going to be some good in this if we chose to find the good in it."
The Pioneers will hit the road at 6 p.m. on Friday as they take on Saint Vincent.