ANNAPOLIS, Md. – Coming off a program-altering win over the University of Florida on Sunday, the Navy women's basketball team was faced with weathering the almost certain adrenaline downswing in its ensuing game. On Wednesday evening, the Mids (4-0) overcame a stagnant first quarter of action that saw them trailing the Rider Broncs (1-4) by three before turning up their efficiency with a dominant 39-16 run of play over the second and third quarters to blow open the game and cruise to an eventual 67-56 victory at Alumni Hall.

Zanai Barnett-Gay (Jr., Glenn Dale, Md.) was the lynch pin of Navy's domineering middle portion of the contest with 18 of her game-high 23 points coming in the second and third quarters. She added to her scoring output with team-highs of 10 rebounds, five assists, three steals and a +17 plus/minus mark. Kate Samson (Sr., Richmond, Va.) was also strong in victory for the Mids with 11 points on an efficient 5-7 shooting to go along with five rebounds. Zoe Mesuch (Fr., Clintondale, N.Y.) increased her streak of double-digit scoring to four games with 10 points on Wednesday night.

"I wanted to see how we were going to respond after that big Florida win and I'm not sure we did that especially well early on," remarked head coach Tim Taylor. "At halftime, I challenged the team to stay under 15 turnovers because we had 11 in the first half. We ended up with two in the second half so I'm pleased with that. In the first half those were some bad turnovers. There's such a thing as a good turnover and a bad turnover, ours were bad and lackadaisical. We started running some motion to get some ball screens. We haven't had to do that all year. We were lucky that Zanai was able to get through some screens and get to the hoop.

"Kate played really well early on. I thought Morgan Demos did some really good things in the second half, especially with the screens and movement. She really helps our offense when she's doing that."

The action at Alumni Hall opened with a slight Rider feel to it as the visitors edged out to an 11-6 lead five minutes into the game. Trailing by five, Navy had a 7-0 rebuttal over a stretch from 4:11 to 2:27 that rode their talented freshmen class throughout it. It began with a pair of Mesuch free throws before Quinn Boettinger (Fr., Schwenksville, Pa.) got a steal and hit Christina Liggio (Fr., Colts Neck, N.J.) for the fast break layup. The Boettinger-Liggio connection paid dividends for the Mids again to round out the streak when Boettinger passed out of the post and found a wide-open Liggio for a three-pointer from the wing. With the score 13-11 in favor of Navy, Rider closed out the quarter with five straight points to take a 16-13 advantage into the quarter break. The Mids were held back by five turnovers in the opening period.

The freshmen continued to keep Navy afloat in the second quarter as Mesuch drew her squad even at 16-16 with a three-pointer at the 6:33 mark. Rider slowly crept ahead over the next two minutes and was up 19-16. The Broncs would later hold leads of 21-20 and 23-22 before Barnett-Gay and Samson netted seven unanswered points for the Mids over the final 64 seconds of the quarter to make it a 29-23 game going into the locker room at halftime. Navy had six more turnovers in the second stanza to hold back its total effectiveness.

After slowly putting some separation between themselves and the Broncs late in the second quarter, the Mids went up nine within the first 1:51 of the third quarter as Julianna Almeida (So., North Arlington, N.J.) led off with a corner three-pointer before Barnett-Gay sank a jump shot at 8:09. A slight comeback by Rider tightened the contest to five, 34-29 at 6:27, before Navy closed the quarter on an 18-3 run to go up 52-32. Barnett-Gay registered 11 of those 18 points with a Nia Henley (Spotsylvania, Va.) steal and pass to Mary Gibbons (So., Holden, Mass.) with 30 seconds to go in the quarter putting the punctuation on the streak. As a team, Navy shot 9-16 from the field and forced Rider into seven turnovers and only allowed three made field goals.

"We haven't really shown a zone press all year and we installed it leading up to this game," said Taylor when asked about the team's second half defensive changes. "We had run it some in the past so our older players have some experience with it. We needed to do something to mix up their [Rider's] flow with the way they were cutting. I don't think we were very physical defensively so they were able to cut and move. I feel that our zone press really affected them. They started turning it over and we were able to get out to a lead."

The Mids continued to hold a 20-point advantage into the early portion of the fourth quarter as they led 57-37 at the 8:17 juncture. A game Rider team continued to fight and rattled off 17 of the next 23 points to pull within nine, 63-54 by the 3:04 mark. That was as close as the Broncs would get as Gibbons nailed a corner three at 2:25 to build the Mids' lead back into double digits. Rider's comeback was bolstered by 10-19 shooting with four three-pointers in the fourth quarter.

"We've got to a much better job holding teams down, we've now been up 15-to-20 points in every game this year and we let teams right back into it," commented Taylor. "Whether that was substitution choices or things I did, that's on me. We have to improve that. We're still trying to feel out our entire roster. We're very talented top-to-bottom. We're giving our players opportunities and its on them to seize them. The more they seize them, the deeper we get. Everyone seeing the floor will help us in the long run. I'm proud that all 14 healthy players got in tonight.

"At the end of the night, we came away with a win and we'll learn from it. Tonight, the standard just wasn't quite there so we'll have to figure out what that standard is moving forward. We saw it in spurts. Rider played its tail off tonight. They played really, really hard. Hats off to their coaching staff to get them to play that hard for 40 minutes."
 
For the game, Navy out-shot Rider, 40.6 percent (26-64) to 37.1 (23-62) from the field, though the visiting Broncs held a slight advantage in three-point shooting 24.1 percent (7-29) to 21.4 (6-28).

The rebounding battle was tied on Wednesday night as both squads came away with 40 rebounds, including 12 on the offensive side of the action by Navy. Barnett-Gay tied Rider's Deb Okechukwu for the game-high with 10 caroms.

The Mids had a positive assist-to-turnover margin with 17 helpers versus a season-low 13 miscues. Barnett-Gay (five) and Almeida (four) combined for nine assists to pace Navy.

Defensively, the Mids forced the Broncs into 20 turnovers and were credited with nine steals. Barnett-Gay led Navy with three steals.

The Mids will now turn their attention to a road matchup on Sunday versus the Richmond Spiders. The action at the Robins Center on Richmond's campus is set for 2 p.m.