Four Ram seniors celebrate senior day, team drops heartbreaker to ODU

Taylor Howsmon

Sports Editor

D’Andra Moss (Atlanta, Ga./Norcross) had her foul line fade away rim out with four second left Sunday as the Rams dropped a classic to Old Dominion, 67-65.
Moss and three other seniors played their final game at the Siegel Center before a crowd of 1078 at the Stuart C. Siegel Center.
“Definitely not the way we wanted it to end here today for the seniors,” said VCU coach Beth Cunningham.
The Rams fell behind early due to the defensive intensity the Monarchs hit the court with from the opening tip.
Thanks to the tough D, the Rams were held to an unremarkable 8-32 shooting in the first half and if not for 10-12 free throw shooting, VCU could have been out of it from the beginning.
With its defense looking about as bad as possible towards the end of the first half, VCU’s Courtney Hurt (Loganville, Ga./Salem) took the team on her back.
Hurt scored VCU’s eight final points in the first half and thanks to that performance the Rams were able to cut the lad to 33-27 at the half.
The second hald provided much of the same thematic action that the first had. The Monarchs continually answered every single VCU spurt with a big three here and a defensive stop there.
The pace of the game seemed to not change as VCU would go down nine and get back to within one, only to see the lead grow back to nine.
With four minutes to go, VCU took its first lead since the opening thirty seconds of the game at 59-58.
With the game close in crunch time, the Rams were determined to not let ODU out of reach again.
ODU took a 67-63 lead with 53 seconds left and that lead was cut in half when Moss hit a jumper to make the score 67-65.
After a huge defensive stop, the Rams had a timeout and the ball with 22 seconds remaining, down two.
After struggling to get the ball inbounds the Rams struggled to work the ball around thanks to the ODU pressure.
Eventually the ball went to Moss who had a good look from the foul line with four seconds left.
The shot barely rimmed out and the Lady Monarchs walked away with the win.
Hurt and Kita Waller (Gainesville, Ga./Gainesville) each scored 18 to lead all scorers in the ball game. Moss finished with 12.
ODU was led by Shadasia Green with 13 and Tia Lewis with 12. Jackie Cook added 10 and what would prove to be the game-winning basket on her layup with 53 seconds left.
VCU finishes the regular season at Northeastern on Wednesday.

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