Photo: St. Bonaventure Athletics
BY: WILL NUNN, STAFF WRITER
The St. Bonaventure women’s basketball team opened its regular season with a win today, defeating the 2-0 Binghamton Bearcats 82-61 at the Reilly Center.
“We knew this was going to be a challenging game,” said head coach Jim Crowley. “Binghamton had a great win Thursday, so we knew we had to play pretty well.”
The Bonnies found success on both ends of the floor, shooting 58% from the field and holding Binghamton to a season-low 61 points.
“I thought we handled their zone really well,” said Crowley. “We passed it well, when we needed a stop, we got it.”
Redshirt senior guard Isabellah Middleton led the way for the Bonnies. The Leesburg, Virginia native shot 8 of 16 from the field and tallied a team-high 19 points to go along with five rebounds.
Bonaventure heavily relied on the three-ball for offensive success down the stretch. The Bonnies drained 13 threes on 23 attempts, with a pair of freshman guards, Mackenzie Pettinelli and Zoe Shaw, shooting 4 of 5 and 3 of 4 from downtown.
Sophomore guard Leah Middleton led the Bearcats with 17 points. Sophomore guard Bella Pucci added 15 points and three steals off the bench.
The Bonnies made a point of pushing the tempo, taking advantage of the Bearcats’ tired legs having played three games this week.
Bonas went on a 10-1 run late in the second quarter, extending their lead to 11, and carried that momentum into the second half. Pettinelli scored eight points in the first three minutes coming out of the halftime break to put the Bonnies up by 16.
“That was big,” said Crowley. “We talk about winning the four five-minute parts of the second half and we did, especially in that first one to really make them work for everything.”
Defensively, the Bonnies were able to force 20 turnovers, with Middleton collecting four steals and redshirt senior guard Dani Haskell adding three more. Capitalizing off the Bearcats’ mistakes, SBU tallied 31 points off turnovers.
“We talk about being really consistent and disciplined in our defense,” said Crowley. “We want to be really efficient with our rate of success after turnovers, and I think we did a really good job of that today.”
The Bonnies will look to win two straight when they travel to Youngstown State University for a date with the Penguins on Tuesday. Tip-off is at 6:30 p.m. in Zidian Family Arena and the game will be streamed on ESPN+.
nunnwg24@bonaventure.edu
