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Health & Fitness

Women's Basketball Bounces Back with 68-54 Win over St. Anselm

Box Score

Garden City, N.Y. –Behind the strength of a dominating first half, the Adelphi University women's basketball team defeated the Hawks of St. Anselm College, 68-54, in Northeast-10 Conference action on Saturday afternoon at the Center for Recreation and Sports. Adelphi snaps its six-game losing streak to improve to 10-9 overall and 7-8 in the NE-10. With the win, the Panthers match their conference win total from a season ago and crack the 10-win mark for the first time since the 2008-09 season. The Hawks fall to 4-15 overall and 1-14 in the conference.

At halftime, Assistant Vice President/Director of Athletics Robert Hartwell and Executive Assistant Dolly Gorman presented a check for $3,000 to the Adelphi New York Statewide Breast Cancer Hotline.

For the Panthers, Jessica Kitrys recorded a double-double behind a game-high 23 points and 11 rebounds, Tara Flynn set a new career-high with 15 behind five three-pointers and Jenna Halaby added 12. Despite being held scoreless for the first time this season, Sade Jackson chipped in six rebounds, four assists and one steal. For Saint Anselm, Allie Jones scored 17 and Briana Jones chipped in 15.

It was all Adelphi in the early going of the first half. From a 2-2 tie, the Panthers would reel off eight straight points, highlighted by a pair of threes from Samantha Milhaven to lead 10-2 after just 2:30. The Panthers would break away with another 10-2 streak over five minutes, capped by Flynn's first three, to lead 20-4 with 12:26 to go.

Two buckets from the Hawks marked the only points for either side over the next four minutes as the Panthers had few opportunities to score. However, Flynn would knock down another three at 8:53 to extend the Brown and Gold's lead to 23-8.

At 5:36, Lauren Nuss hit a three from the corner to increase the lead to 28-10, and neither team would score a field goal for the next three minutes of action. However, Nuss' second three would push the Panthers' lead over 20, 32-11, with 2:38 to go.

In the final two minutes, Kitrys and Halaby each sunk a pair of shots from the charity stripe for the Panthers, which brought them into halftime with a 36-14 lead.

Six points from Kitrys opened the second half for the Brown and Gold and upped their lead to 42-16 with 17:09 remaining in the game. The Hawks would play some of their best basketball of the game and explode for an 11-2 run over five minutes of action to bring the deficit to 44-29 at 12:25.

At that point, Flynn drained her third three-pointer of the game to put the Panthers up 47-29. Less than two minutes later, Flynn would hit another from behind the arc to put the Panthers over the 50-point plateau, 52-33, with just over 10 minutes to go.

A 7-0 run would get the Hawks to 54-42, the closest the visitors had been since the opening minutes of the game, but Flynn would drain her fifth and final trey of the game to put the Panthers back up by 15, 57-42 with 6:47 to play.
The Hawks outscored the Panthers 10-6 over the next five minutes to pull within 11, the closest margin of the game, but Shannon Flynn rolled in a layup with exactly a minute to play to give the Panthers a 13-point cushion. With the Hawks forced to foul, the Brown and Gold hit three of five freebies to ice the victory.

The Panthers return to action on Wednesday, February 6, when they travel to the University of New Haven for an NE-10 contest at 5:30 p.m.

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