Women’s basketball drops crucial game against Xavier
On Saturday afternoon at the Siegel Center, VCU lost a hard-fought game against Xavier 64-56 which kept them on the outside looking in to the Atlantic 10 tournament.
Zachary Holden
Staff Writer
It was just the game they expected from the Xavier Musketeers.
On Saturday afternoon at the Siegel Center, VCU lost a hard-fought game against Xavier 64-56 which kept them on the outside looking in to the Atlantic 10 tournament. With both teams at the bottom half of the A-10 standings, a win was crucial.
In the first half, the Rams looked solid. Carleeda Green started off the scoring with a long-ranged jumper just inside the arc. Baskets from Robyn Parks and Jessica Pellechio led to as much as a 10-point lead for the Rams in the first half. Xavier would fight back to close the half on a 4-0 run to cut VCU’s lead to 28-25 entering the break.
Pellechio led the Rams in the first half with 10 points on 4-of-11 shooting.
“My screeners help me a lot, most of the plays that are run around us, I have to come off the screen,” said Pellechio. “My screeners are the best that I can ask for and they got me open a lot.”
The second half started off with a quick 4-0 run by Xavier before VCU responded with a 6-0 run of its own. With 13 minutes to go, the Rams had a 38-31 lead and it appeared as if they would hold on for the win.
But missed shots and two turnovers by VCU over the next three minutes saw Xavier hold on to a slim 39-38 lead, its first of the game. Over the next six minutes, the game went back and forth and either team looked as if it could win it late.
Over the final three and a half minutes, Xavier would not relinquish their lead and the closest the Rams got was within three. Missed shot after missed shot coupled with poor rebounding effectively lost the game for the Rams late.
“They did a very good job rebounding…to get outrebounded by 17 is a little discouraging to us,” said VCU head coach Marlene Stollings. “We didn’t get in there and fight hard enough.”
After Pellechio’s 10 point first half, she would shoot 1-for-7 in the second half and only add two points. In the second half, Xavier seemed to read the screen play by VCU a bit better, which led to Pellechio’s dip in performance.
“That was my fault, the screens were still set well and I should’ve run off them better,” said Pellechio.
Robyn Parks, however, continued her standout season. She finished the game with 21 points, 11 rebounds, 7 steals and 5 assists, which marked her 26th straight double-digit game this season, as well as her 10th double-double of the season.
“I think I’ve been doing a pretty good job, but at the end of the day it’s not about an individual person, it’s about the team,” Parks said. “Me putting up numbers every night, if we’re losing, it really doesn’t mean anything to me.”
The loss keeps the Rams outside of the top-12 in the A-10, which would mean they won’t make the postseason tournament if the season ended today.
“Now it’s pretty much out of our hands. If we had won today, we knew that we controlled our own destiny into the tournament,” Stollings said. “The loss today really puts it in other team’s hands. [We are] hoping teams lose.”
VCU visits Charlotte Thursday before returning home on March 3 to host Rhode Island in the final game of the regular season.