Box Score WEBSTER GROVES, MO – The Principia Women's Basketball team took on the Westminster College Blue Jays in the semifinals of the SLIAC Tournament on Friday night. After splitting the season series, Friday's rubber match was held in the gym of the regular season champion, Webster University. The Panthers left it all on the floor, but the Blue Jays' strong second half propelled to their fourth straight conference title game with a 63-56 victory.
The Panthers started the game well, but not with quite the same energy that they had in their quarterfinal win on Wednesday night. The Principia defense stepped up and held Westminster to just 9 points in the first quarter as the Panthers took a 14-9 lead after the opening frame. The Blue Jays bounced back in the second quarter as their two-time Player of the Year, Annette Ramirez, helped them outscore Principia 17-12 to head into halftime knotted at 26 all.
Westminster rode their momentum from the second quarter and took it to the Panthers in the third. The Blue Jays played tough defense and converted many of their offensive possessions to take a 10 point lead into the final frame. The lead grew to 14 with 3:43 remaining in the game, but the Panthers would not give up with their season on the line. Principia would go on a 10-0 run over the next three minutes as sophomore
Trinniti Matthews took over the game by scoring 8 of the 10 points on clutch free throws and buckets in the paint. Her contested layup with 48 seconds to go made the score 60-56, but unfortunately for the Panthers, that would be as close as they would come. A late missed three on Principia's final possession that was converted into a last second layup by Westminster ended the Panthers' season and their tournament run.
Coach Ro said afterwards: "When you get to these final games in the SLIAC, you are going to run into great teams, and Westminster is an extremely well-rounded group who are so well coached. We learned a lot about ourselves in this tournament run. In the future, us coaches need to work on preparing the team to come out of the gate with a little more tempo and confidence than we did tonight. But on the season as a whole, we had an incredible year, and these women worked hard every day on the court and in the classroom. I truly could not be more proud of them. Not having any more practices with these wonderful women is honestly the hardest part of losing."
2023-24 has been the Principia Women's Basketball program's best season since their record run to the conference championship game in 2006-07. The Panthers' 15 wins this year is their third highest total since joining the SLIAC, and their 12 conference wins is second only to that 2007 team. These Panthers will forever go down as the program's first winning season – both overall and in conference play – in 17 years. Thank you for everyone's amazing support of the team this year, and we can't wait to keep building in 2024-25!
