Final Stats

LEWISBURG, Pa. - The Navy women's basketball team scored seven of the final 10 points of the game, but a last second shot by the Mids went wide as the buzzer sounded to give Bucknell a 51-50 victory Wednesday night at Sojka Pavilion in Lewisburg, Pa.

The result places Navy, Bucknell and Holy Cross into a tie for fourth place in the Patriot League standings with identical 7-6 records.

The first half was a close one until the Mids scored the last six points to take a 27-19 lead at the break. Navy's bench sparked the offense in the first half as the reserves scored 15 of the team's 27 points.

Bucknell opened the second half by hitting four of their first six shots while the Mids were 0-7 from the floor to allow the Bison to open the half on 10-0 run and take a 29-27 lead. Navy regained the lead at 32-31, then the teams traded the lead twice more through the Mids taking a 37-36 advantage with 9:22 remaining.

"I feel we hit some shots and that sparked us and our defense," said Navy head coach Stefanie Pemper of regrouping after Bucknell's early second-half spurt.

The Bison ran off the next nine points -- six coming from the foul line -- to build a 44-37 advantage with 6:34 showing on the clock. Navy slowly chipped away at the deficit and used a 7-2 run to tie the game at 48-48 on a layup from Justice Swett (So., Nashville, Tenn.) with 2:26 left to play.

Bucknell regain the lead on its next possession when Audrey Dotson made a three-point shot with just over two minutes showing on the clock. Sarita Condie (So., Lovelock, Nev.) was fouled on Navy's ensuing possession and her two free throws with 1:49 remaining winnowed the margin down to 51-50.

The Bison had a lengthy possession on its next trip down the court, but came away scoreless despite taking three shots. Condie snared the defensive carom after their third attempt (48 seconds left) and raced down the court. She dribbled to the baseline before heading toward the basket with a Bucknell player right with her. Condie crossed under the basket and was called for an offensive foul when the two players made contact with each other. That gave Bucknell the ball with 38.1 seconds still to play.

The Bison brought the ball over halfcourt before calling their final timeout with 17.1 seconds left on the game clock and nine seconds remaining on the shot clock. As play resumed, Bucknell gave the ball to Claire DeBoer who tried an off balance shot from inside of the lane. That effort missed, with Marina Muenster (Fr., Coppell, Texas) grabbing the loose ball for the Mids and calling timeout with 6.8 seconds showing on the clock.

"I thought we made an important adjustment to our ball screen defense with about five minutes left in the game," said Pemper, "and that really helped us. That stretch where they got the lead, ball screens were hurting us. We communicated well in a timeout what they were doing and how we wanted to defend it. It was something a little different than we had seen on film, so we wanted to talk about how to defend it. I thought in the last two minutes, Dotson's three was huge, but we came up with some good defense rebounds and stopped fouling."

The inbounds pass went to Swett, who quickly gave it to Condie. She sprinted down the middle of the court and to the left wing before passing it inside to Muenster. Despite having several Bucknell players on her, Muenster was able to get a turnaround shot off just before the buzzer sounded that missed its mark.

"We just wanted to get the ball into Sarita's hands," said Pemper of the last possession. "We weren't positive how quickly she was going to get it, but we wanted her to get it with some speed going toward the basket."

While Bucknell was shooting 45.5 percent from the field after halftime and made 9 of 10 second-half free throws, Navy made 36 percent of its second-half shots and was just 3 of 4 from the foul line after intermission. The Bison also held a 17-12 advantage on the glass in the second half.

Condie, who made the second start of this season and her career tonight, scored 15 points to lead the Navy offense. She was joined in double figures by Muenster with 11 points. Muenster also added eight rebounds.

"We made some strides tonight executing some of our offenses," said Pemper. "We're still looking for some consistency from more players game-to-game. It usually is offensively that we needed that, but tonight it was more defensively. We gave up 32 points in the second half after just 19 in the first half. But we did hold them to 51 points, so defense was not why we lost the game."

Bucknell's Jacquie Klotz scored 17 points to lead all players.

Navy will be back in Alumni Hall Saturday when the Mids play host to Colgate in a 4 p.m. game.