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ANNAPOLIS, Md. â€"â€" Colgate shot 50 percent from the floor in the second half to rally for a 69-61 victory over the Navy women's basketball team Saturday afternoon at Alumni Hall in Annapolis. The victory by Colgate (8-14, 5-6 Patriot League) snapped Navy's (16-6, 9-2) nine-game winning streak and the team's 10-game home winning streak which dated back to the end of last season.

Navy remains in a first-place tie with Bucknell as the Bison also lost today. Both teams sit just one game in front of third-place American with seven games remaining in the 18-game regular season.

"We just talked (in the locker room afterward) about the cliché of taking it game-by game and knowing that you have to play well and execute to win and not think about what else is happening (in other games)," said Navy head coach Stefanie Pemper. "We knew Colgate was going to bring a little different challenge than a lot of teams in our league. They score a lot of points, they give up a lot of points, it is going to be a higher scoring game. They like to shoot a lot of threes, like us, so we knew it was going to be different, so enjoy that, enjoy the different test than it was Thursday and last Saturday. So you have to like basketball and the strategy of the X's and O's, and we do. That's what you want your focus to be and not just winning and losing and what winning and losing means."

The two teams consistently traded baskets throughout the first half. The Mids scored consecutive points only four times in the half while the Raiders did so only three times. Navy managed to put together a nine-point lead several times late in the second quarter â€"â€" 26-17, 28-19, 31-22 and 33-24 â€"â€" but Colgate scored the last four points of the half to make the score 33-28 at intermission.

The Raiders continued their run at the very start of the third quarter as they scored the opening seven points of the stanza to take their first of the game at 35-33. The Mids answered on their next possession with a three-point field goal by Taylor Dunham (Jr., Fort Belvoir, Va.) to regain the lead. The lead changed hands three more times over the remainder of the quarter before the teams went into the fourth quarter knotted at 44.

The lead would go back and forth three times in a span of 70 seconds early in the final frame, then the score was tied three times with what would prove to be the last tie at 54-54. Colgate promptly scored on each of its next two trips down the floor to take a 58-54 lead. Navy sliced the margin down to two points at both 58-56 and 60-58, but after each of those two Navy baskets Colgate scored within 15 seconds to once again take four-point leads. The Raiders then were able to go on a seven-point run that gave them a 67-58 lead with only 15 seconds remaining on the clock.

Navy shot 47 percent from the field in the first quarter, but followed that effort by connecting on 35.3, 27.3 and 36.8 percent of its shots in the three ensuing respective frames. The Mids were just 10-30 (30%) from the field in the second half while the Raiders were 17-34 (50%) from the floor in the same 20-minute span, which allowed Colgate to outscore Navy 41-28 in the second half. Aiding that effort was Colgate holding a 25-12 edge on the glass in the second half, which included a 7-2 advantage in offensive boards. Colgate would hold an overall rebounding advantage of 42-33.

"Three-point shooting accuracy," said Pemper when asked what jumps out at her in the box score. "We got some really good looks. Thirty-two percent (9-28) is solid, but with the quality of looks we had it should have been higher. That would have really helped us, particularly with the timing (of them) at the end. We had some really good looks that we missed.

"The other big number is our final score (61). At the half we were at 33, but at the end of the first quarter we were at 19. We never got back to that."

Sarita Condie (Sr., Lovelock, Nev.) totaled 19 points to lead all players in the game in scoring, while Dunham added not only 13 points but a career-high tying six assists.

"We've been on the other side of these close games," said Condie of the Mids who have had seven of their 11 league games decided by single digits this season (5-2 record in those games), with six of those games being determined by no more than five points (5-1 record). "It is just finding a way to respond offensively and defensively to pull it out, and it was a little bit (breakdowns) on both tonight."

"In practice," said Dunham, "we do a drilled call 'stop-score-stop' and it is something we say in timeouts in games if the game is close. We didn't get as many stops or get as many scores as we needed to."

Those two Mids combined to shoot 12-31 (38.7%) from the floor and 7-21 (33.3%) from three-point land. The rest of the Navy squad was 12-33 (36.4%) from the field and 2-7 (28.6%) from three-point range.

"We have felt like we have been winning some big games and we haven't had enough people necessarily playing well," said Pemper. "Just that reminder that we need more people to play well, in whatever they bring to the table. A loss like this kind of hits that home.

"We could have lost four games like this; probably five. It just comes down to executing. Mindset is such a big part of it. It is such a cliché to take it game-by-game and we need people to play well. I thought Taylor responded really well this game. Against Boston (a 55-41 win Thursday) we had a couple of kids play well and we won, and that's happened a few times. It's a little bit of wondering how long that can continue where we only have a couple of kids score well and we still win."

Kateri Stone, who led Colgate with 19 points in the first meeting between the teams this season, led the Raiders with 15 points today.

Navy will take to the road for a pair of games next week, starting with a Wednesday night game at Loyola.