Last Wednesday, Women’s Basketball took a hard-fought loss to DeSales University with a score of 89-67 in the MAC Freedom Semifinals. The fourth-seeded Ducks finish the season with a 14-12 record. Top-seed DeSales won all three matchups against the Ducks this year. DeSales went on to defeat second-seed Arcadia University and earned their first-weekend host in the NCAA Tournament.
Sophomores Sophia Bica and Dorothy Loffredo scored the first two baskets of the game for Stevens as they led 4-2. DeSales went on a 13-0 run as they took a commanding 11-point early lead. The Ducks fought back to get within eight to end the first quarter.
The Bulldogs started the second by hitting a triple, but the Ducks scored the next four to get back within seven. With 2:56 left on the clock, sophomore Leyla Castro made a jumper that brought the Ducks within three at 29-26. Castro later added a triple with six seconds left, as DeSales led just 34-31 at the half.
To start the second half, DeSales scored the first nine as they took a 12-point lead. DeSales then scored five of the next seven, which Castro responded with a basket from behind the arc. Down 53-36, first-year Paige Gorczyca and junior Lucy Alberici made back-to-back baskets that trimmed the deficit to 13. Castro made a buzzer-beater basket to end the third, but DeSales led 63-47.
With 8:18 left in the fourth quarter, DeSales took a 23-point lead. With under five minutes to go and trailing by 24, Stevens rattled off six-straight, but the deficit was too much to overcome, as the Ducks fell to the Bulldogs.
Although their season may not have ended how they might have wanted, the team has accomplished a lot throughout the season worthy of being proud of.
