ELSAH, IL – The Principia Women's Basketball team welcomed their Panther rivals from Greenville to Hay Field House on Saturday. However, just like their battle earlier this season at Greenville, the game came down to the final minutes with the more experienced Panthers from Greenville prevailing in the end.
The game was a story of two halves for Principia as the first half looked like the team that has been struggling the second half of conference season, but the second half looked more like the winning Panthers from the first half of the conference season. Early on, Principia was having struggles getting organized due to some recent changes to the positions of some of the guards.
Coach Ro on the position changes: "We have a great set of guards on this team, but we needed to utilize
Taylor Brown more effectively while still getting
Ariana Williams into attack mode. This meant moving
Carolina Rojas over to point guard a lot more which is a new position for her. She did great with just 2 turnovers against Greenville's constant full court pressure, and as the game went on, we started to get the results that we need from her hard work and using Taylor and Ariana more efficiently."
Despite the miscues in the first, Principia only found themselves down 14-12 going into the second. Principia struggled with getting out-rebounded in the first half, allowing 10 offensive boards by Greenville, with several of these coming in the second quarter. These second chance points led to easy buckets by Greenville with Principia going into the half down 31-23.
The third quarter is where the early season version of the Principia Panthers showed up. They came together as a group defensively and started to knock down shots offensively from everywhere on the floor. A layup by
Paige Fowler started things off, followed by several layups and free throws from Brown and Williams. The quarter ended on huge back-to-back threes from
Hannah Wymer and
Brin Hultz to give Principia their first lead of the game at 46-45.
Greenville started off the fourth quarter hot by jumping out to a 10-point lead, but some defensive stops followed by some timely drives by Brown, Williams and Fowler helped get Principia back into the mix. Down by two with 1:16 left in the game, Brown hit a game-tying long range jumper. After Greenville jumped back up by five,
Alana Hinson hit her second three of the quarter to get Principia back within two with 16 seconds left. Principia had to foul to try to extend the game, and a game-tying three attempt was blocked by Greenville as the visitors prevailed, 72-67.
Ariana Williams led Principia with 17 points, while adding 8 rebounds, 5 steals, and a block.
Taylor Brown finished with 14 points, 7 rebounds, 5 assists, and 2 steals.
Alana Hinson hit 4 threes and
Hannah Wymer hit 3 threes to help keep the game close.
Up Next: The Panthers take a break from their conference schedule with a road game at Illinois College on Monday, February 6th at 7:00 pm. Tune in as they look to get back in the win column!
