By Jonathan Sawyer
Sports Assignment Editor
Coming off its first loss in 16 games, the women’s basketball team avenged itself by dominating the Saint Joseph’s University Hawks by a score of 65-51 Wednesday night. The Bonnies went 49 percent from the field and 41 percent from three-point land in Wednesday night’s victory and were locked in on defense.
Senior guard Nyla Rueter was the leader in scoring for the Bonnies as she went for 16 points and three assists. Rueter spoke about how she was locked in before the game.
“Today during shoot-around, Jess (assistant coach, Jessica Jenkins) shot with me, just to get my confidence back and she gave me a good talk before the game and told me to just stay confident,” Rueter said.
Coming into Wednesday’s game, it was all about how the girls respond to the loss, said Head Coach Jim Crowley.
“With winning a lot you can get away with some bad habits and Duquesne did a good job of exposing some of that,” Crowley said. “The real response comes down to the players, and they know what to do to be successful but now it’s getting back to it.”
With 11 players in the scoring category, Crowley tributes this win to a total team effort on the offensive and defensive side of the ball.
“I thought it was a really good team effort, everybody did good things. There was a few areas we didn’t defend consistently,” Crowley said. “It was good to see us share the ball it was good to see us have some good team defensive energy for spurts in the first half.”
The Bonnies were keeping their hands in the passing lanes totaling 13 steals and forcing the Hawks to shoot from behind the arc.
“I thought we were doing a really good job with sticking to our basics, we were just playing good solid active defense, we were really active which created extra opportunities for us with the steals,” Crowley said.
In Saturday’s loss, the Bonnies only went 40 percent from the field. The Bonnies struggled early to get the ball inside but luckily, the three- point game was working.
As the game progressed, the Bonnies made it a point to get to the basket and field the ball inside more. Crowley believes that this was the best game they have had this season getting to the rim, he said.
“As good as we have done all year at attacking the rim, we’ve got more lay ups then we have probably got in a while without having a post player score,” said Crowley.
Sophomore guard Mariah Ruff sparked the team in the second by feeding her teammates the ball and knocking down some big shots.
“I think I was calmer in the second half, in the first half I was pretty pumped up because of the loss on Saturday and I think we all settled down in the second,” Ruff said.
The Bonnies are 18-3 on the season and 7-1 in conference play after Wednesday night’s win against the Hawks. They are 12-0 at home this season. They look to extend their winning streak to 13 straight home victories Sunday against the University of Richmond Spiders at 12:30 p.m.
sawyerjp15@bonaventure.edu
