LOUISVILLE, KY – The Principia Women's Basketball team kept the momentum rolling of their young conference season with an impressive road win over the Spalding University Golden Eagles on Tuesday. Spalding is a notoriously tough opponent, especially at home, and they gave the Panthers a great fight the whole game. In the end, Principia stayed just far enough ahead to close out the Golden Eagles for a 79-71 victory.
The first quarter started off with both teams feeling each other out. After Spalding went on a little 6-0 run halfway through the quarter, the Panthers gathered themselves and put together a run of their own behind two successful three pointers by
Hannah Wymer. Some great post play by
Deija Carter helped lead to a one point advantage for Principia by the end of the first.
The Panthers start to get a little separation from the Golden Eagles at the beginning of the second quarter as four different Panthers made contributions on the offensive end. The entire team stepped up on defense as all seven Principia women made numerous huge defensive plays.
Paige Fowler showed why she leads the conference in rebounds as she controlled the glass with five key boards in the quarter. By game's end, Fowler finished with 14 rebounds and 13 points for her third double double in the last four games. This was her fourth double double on the season and seventh in her collegiate career.
Coming out of halftime with a 32-26 lead, the Panthers once again needed to come up big on both ends of the floor to fight off a Golden Eagles team that would not back down.
Carolina Rojas and
Brin Hultz took over the scoring load in the quarter as they both made multiple conversions look easy. Principia increased their halftime lead by one as the third quarter closed at 52-45.
The fourth quarter was a series of surges by the Golden Eagles, which the Panthers met every time to get back control of the game. As the quarter began, sophomores Fowler, Rojas and Hultz had big buckets to keep the Panthers in the lead. Then to close out the game, the freshman duo of
Taylor Brown and
Ariana Williams helped to finish off the Golden Eagles by attacking the rim and knocking down key free throws for the 79-71 victory. Hultz finished with a team-high 19 points, while the Panthers' player of the game was Brown who stuffed the stat sheet with 18 points, 8 assists, 5 rebounds, 4 steals, and took 2 charges.
Up Next: The Panthers will have an huge test on Saturday at 1:00 pm when they head to Webster to face the defending SLIAC champion Gorloks. Both Principia and Webster are 4-1 in SLIAC play this year, so this will be an important battle for the top of the conference. If you are in the area, please come support your Panthers!
