The Quinnipiac Bobcats women’s basketball team fell to the Manhattan Jaspers, 52-42. Quinnipiac (4-4, 0-2 MAAC) struggled to hit the net all night, scoring on only 16 baskets of the 75 shots they took. Manhattan (3-4, 2-0 MAAC) had some struggles too, committing 35 turnovers in the game.
With a little over six minutes to play in the fourth quarter and with the Bobcats down two possessions, Quinnipiac forced a turnover that sprung Brittany Johnson loose for a wide open layup, when Blake Underhill grabbed Johnson forcing an intentional foul call, sending Johnson to the line for two shots and giving Quinnipiac possession. The Bobcats failed to capitalize.
Johnson missed both free throws and on the following possession, the Bobcats turned the ball over. The Jaspers followed the Bobcats’ possession up with two big buckets to put them up by 10 and never looked back.
“Totally empty. That really hurt,” Quinnipiac head coach Tricia Fabbri said about the biggest point in the game and the best opportunity for the Bobcats to get back into it.
“That was the last bit of fight and life we had left in us,” Fabbri said. “The talk was good on the bench, the energy was good on the bench. That really was the last gasp of breath for us when we couldn’t cash in on a big swing when the scoring was so hard to come by.”
Both the Jaspers and the Bobcats came out of the gate in the first quarter struggling to find their grooves offensively but made up for it defensively. The Bobcats forced Manhattan into turnovers early in their possessions with a full court press that lead to easy opportunities but the Bobcats struggled to opportunities into any offense as they converted on just 4 of their 22 buckets in the first stanza.
Manhattan, changed the pace in the second quarter however, using the Bobcats nine first-half turnovers and driving to the paint for easy buckets. The Jaspers got off to an 8-0 run at the beginning of the second quarter to pull away from the Bobcats.
The first bucket for Quinnipiac in the second half came with a little over six minutes to play in the third quarter with an Adily Martucci basket, which pulled them within one. The Bobcats quickly got a chance to go ahead with a huge turnover in the backcourt for the Jaspers, as Quinnipiac’s Maria Napolitano drilled a three to give the Bobcats their first lead of the second half. But the Bobcats squandered more opportunities in the third and found themselves down six when Katie Carroll made a huge three point play to send Quinnipiac into the last quarter down only three, before the missed foul shots and turnovers allowed the Jaspers to run away with the game.
After a tough loss, the team gets the chance to regroup before they resume play on Wednesday.
“Now we get a couple of days to really concern ourselves with ourselves,” Fabbri said. “And really get back to what we do. We need to get back to playing basketball.”
The Bobcats will pick back up the action this Wednesday when they travel north to Boston for a matchup with Northeastern at the Cabot Center.
