By Skye Tulio
Sports Editor
Sporting pink socks and pink pre-wrap in their hair, the Bonnies (9-15, 2-7), despite playing a strong first half, fell short to Virginia Commonwealth last Sunday, 64-51.
The women and their fans flooded the Reilly Center with pink in honor of Play 4 Kay Pink Day. Joining the fight against breast cancer, the Bonnies showed their support for the Kay Yow Foundation, whose namesake reflects the late NC State coach.
The Brown and White hope to end their five-game losing streak when they travel to Butler Sunday for a 2 p.m. game.
This will be the first meeting between the Bonnies and the Bulldogs since Butler (14-9, 5-3) joined the Atlantic 10 in May 2012. The Bulldogs have made three postseason appearances in the last three years in addition to four straight 20-win seasons.
With only five games left in the regular season, the Bonnies face some of the league’s top-standing teams, including current first-place team, Dayton, fifth place Fordham and the sixth -place Bulldogs. A-10 Conference wins are vital at this point in the season for the Bonnies in order to earn a spot in the postseason tournament. Only the top 12 teams move on to the tournament taking place in Philadelphia’s Hagan Arena beginning in March.
Prior to the VCU game, the Bonnies were 2-6 in the A-10, holding the 12th and final qualifying spot for the conference tournament.
Coach Jim Crowley said his main concern is getting his team prepared for the next couple weeks of play.
“Our opponents matter very little right now to me — we’ve got to get ourselves right,” Crowley said. “We’ve got to get better each day and demand more of ourselves. Who we play and what they do obviously we’ll work on and prepare for, but we’ve got to be more concerned with what we do and get better at that.”
Crowley said the Bonnies need to strive to be better and work harder in practice to see better results come game time.
“We’ve just got to get better,” Crowley said. “We want to get better every day, we want to win every day and to do that we’ve got to understand playing hard a whole practice. On Friday, we had maybe the best practice we’ve had all year then we follow it up Saturday with a below average practice sort of like our game — pretty solid first half and a crappy second half.”
Shooting 43.5 percent (10-23) from the floor in the first half, the Bonnies maintained an early lead relying on the play of freshman forward Katie Healy. Scoring eight of the team’s first 10 points, Healy helped the Brown and White gain a 10-5 advantage with less than 12 minutes left in the half.
The Rams fired back, scoring 11 points on a 6-0 run with just 6:32 remaining. Freshman guard Emily Michael scored of one the Bonnies’ seven triples of the day to get the lead back for the women. With 52 seconds left in the half, the Rams tied the score at 21. However, right before the buzzer, junior guard Ashley Zahn nailed a deep three-pointer to give the Bonnies a 24-21 lead to end the half. Healy led all scorers with nine points at the half, including seven rebounds.
The Rams started off the second half with possession of the ball and quickly gained a 27-24 lead over the Brown and White. However, another Zahn three-pointer and a free throw from junior forward Doris Ortega gave the Bonnies their final lead of the half.
The Rams dominated the half thanks in part to junior guard Robyn Parks, who scored 16 points in the half as well as freshman guard Jessica Pellechio with 11 points. That dominance paired with SBU’s lack of consistency on offense helped the Rams gain their first victory over the Bonnies, ending their six-game losing streak.
“We didn’t practice hard enough to get ready for how hard they (VCU) play,” Crowley said. “I’m pretty demanding of effort — you can get away with that not as much when you have a number of shot makers. We don’t have a number of shot makers, so we’ve got to make sure we play hard the whole time.”
Especially on the defense, Crowley said the Bonnies gave VCU control of the court.
“We allowed them to do what they wanted,” Crowley. “We guarded as individuals, not as a team.
“Offensively we were very tentative and unsure of what we did,” Crowley said. “We can’t start a half with four straight turnovers and expect good things to happen. We knew turnovers were an issue and we just carried it forward and didn’t play very well.”
