Coming off one of their best games of the season, a 79-54 win over Simmons College, the Emerson women have now won their last three games by a combined score of 65 points and they continued their hot streak against the Mount Ida Mustangs, even playing without their leading scorer, sophomore center Lauren Zaniboni, who was out with a concussion. The Lions seemed unaffected and ran away with the game, 74-49.
The team has now won their last three games by a combined score of 65 points. Before the game started, the Lions were in a three way tie for third in the GNAC while the Mustangs had yet to win a game in the conference. The win assured the Emerson women they would keep pace in-conference for at least another day.
“Going into this game, coming off of Simmons we just really wanted to make sure that we carried on what we did against Simmons,” said senior center and co-captain Lauren Vassallo, a print journalism major.
Without Zaniboni, the Lions stepped up as a team and spread the scoring around with four players ending up in double digits. This included sophomore forward Kathy Andrade leading the way with 19 points, and senior guard Maude Okrah with 15.
The team came out of their pre-game huddle ready for battle, winning the tip before Okrah pushed the ball up court and threw it inside to Vassallo for an easy lay-up. The Mustangs were able to tie the game at five but could not pull ahead as the Lions finished with a 44-21 advantage at half. The second half would be much more of the same, even though Emerson let up on defense; Mount Ida was plagued by mistakes including poor rebounding and turnovers.
“Coach warned us the practice before if we didn’t come to play we’d get ourselves into a battle,” said Okrah, marketing communication major and co-captain. “I think the beauty of GNAC is that you just never know what you’re going to get, it’s the unpredictable. A team could be 0-9, give you the best game of the season and you could lose that.”
The most important thing to the team, however, was not the final score but the fact the Emerson women played a strong game.
“My biggest thing was just to play well, I honestly don’t care if we win or lose the game, I really don’t. If we lose to a better team and we play well, I don’t care, it’s fine. My goal was to play well,” said second year Head Coach William Gould. “We had very balanced scoring. We scored any way we wanted.”
Even after three blowouts, Emerson was trying its best to stay grounded and not look too far ahead.
“We’re just trying to win all our GNAC games,” said Andrade, a broadcast journalism major. “Really our number one goal is to win the GNAC and just take one game at a time.”
The Lions fell to St. Joseph’s College in Maine, 73-56 on Saturday. They are still tied for third in the GNAC, however, with Rivier College.