Box Score

ANNAPOLIS, Md. â€"â€" LIU Brooklyn overcame an 11-point fourth-quarter deficit to the Navy women's basketball team to force overtime, then scored the final five points of the game to defeat the Mids, 68-66, Wednesday night at Alumni Hall in Annapolis.

The game was Navy's (4-3) fourth in a row that was extended into overtime.

"We made a lot of mistakes down the stretch," said Navy head coach Stefanie Pemper, "and they (LIU) made a lot of great plays. The fouls and turnovers by us ... I was impressed by Long Island's determination and never die attitude. I thought they pulled it out because if that. We just didn't play well enough to win."

LIU (2-3), which dressed only seven players, jumped out to a 17-9 lead at the end of the first quarter. Navy quickly regained the lead at 26-25 before going into halftime trailing, 31-30.

The Mids dominated the third quarter. Navy held LIU to just one made field goal in the frame â€"â€" and that came with 58 seconds remaining â€"â€" in outscoring the Blackbirds, 18-6, to take a 48-37 advantage into the fourth quarter.

Navy's lead was still double figures at 50-40 when LIU scored the next nine points to close to within a single point before eventually taking a 55-52 lead with 1:47 left in the frame. The lead changed hands three times over the 70 seconds of play, with those exchanges capped by Sarah Reilly (So., Cincinnati, Ohio) hitting a jumper with 26 seconds left to give Navy a 58-57 lead. Reilly then grabbed an errant LIU shot and was fouled with 17 seconds still to play. She walked to the other end of the court and made both attempts to stretch Navy's lead to 60-57.

The Mids played very good defense on the Blackbirds and never let them get into any kind of offense. With time running out and forced to take a three-point shot, LIU gave the ball to Shanovia Dove who had made five triples in the first half. She attempted a shot from 22-feet out and missed, but she was fouled by Reilly on the play with 4.9 seconds remaining. Dove made all three attempts to knot the score.

Navy called timeout to advance the ball in front of its bench after the break in the action. After the ball was inbounded, it quickly found its way into the hands of Taylor Dunham (So., Fort Belvoir, Va,), who missed a three-point attempt. Haley Unger (So., Marlboro, N.J.) grabbed the miss, but her flip shot toward the basket also missed its mark as the buzzer sounded.

Justice Swett (Jr., Nashville, Tenn.) accounted for the first two field goals of the overtime period to give the Mids an early 64-60 lead. LIU's next possession saw Paris Jones bank in a three-point shot to winnow the margin down to one point midway through the extra period. Neither team could score over the next minute and change until Peri Curtis (Sr., Coronado, Calif.) hit a jumper to give Navy a 66-63 lead with 1:10 left to play.

Jones was fouled on the next LIU trip down the floor, and she made a pair of free throws to cut the margin back down to one point with 44.0 seconds remaining. Her teammate, Shanice Vaughan, promptly stole the ball from Sarita Condie (Jr., Lovelock, Nev.) at the top of the key on Navy's offensive end of the court, and she took the ball the remainder of the way to score on a driving layup and give LIU a 67-66 lead with 15.4 seconds left. Navy missed a pair of shots on its ensuing possession, after which it fouled Vaughan with 3.3 seconds left. Vaughan missed the first attempt and made the second to make it a 68-66 LIU lead and result in the Mids calling timeout. Inbounding in front of the Navy bench, the Mids gave the ball to Bianca Roach (Fr., Virginia Beach, Va.), who was whistled for traveling while driving to the basket with 2.4 seconds left. The Blackbirds inbounded the ball and ran out the clock.

Navy held a slight advantage in field goal percentage, 36.1%-35.5%, and made more field goals than LIU did, 26-22. However, the Blackbirds were 9-19 (47.4%) from the three-point line and 15-20 (75.0%) from the foul line while the Mids were 6-29 (20.7%) from beyond the arc and 8-15 (53.3%) from the charity stripe. Both teams committed 16 turnovers â€"â€" Navy turned the ball over a total of eight times in the fourth period and overtime while forcing LIU into just two turnovers over the same 15 minutes of play â€"â€" with Navy also holding a 51-42 edge on the glass.

"I think their pressure effected some of our key players at important times," said Pemper. "We knew that coming in. We had them scouted perfectly; we knew exactly what they were going to do. For some reason we couldn't get it going out of the gate. We knew we were going to get some wide open shots, but we didn't shoot the ball well in the first half. But then we did enough, obviously, to come back, but we made too many mistakes."

Reilly scored a career-high 20 points for the Mids, with Swett sinking 5-6 shots from the field in tallying 10 points. Those two players were 13-27 (48.1%) from the field and 6-8 (75%) from the foul line, while the remainder of the Mids were 13-45 (28.9%) from the floor and 2-7 (28.6%) from the free throw stripe.

Dove scored 27 points to lead all players on the night.

Navy will play Saturday at Penn.