The Rock women’s basketball team’s (5-3, 2-1 PSAC) two-game losing streak was snapped Tuesday evening with a 69-50 victory at Ohio Valley (1-5), holding the Fighting Scots to a 28.3 field goal percentage and forcing 18 turnovers.
Junior guards Audrey Stapleton and Lexi Carpenter both scored double-digit figures for The Rock. Stapleton went 6-9 from the field scoring a team-high 15 points in just 19 minutes of playing time. Carpenter started the game and made four out of six field goal attempts scoring 12 points while dishing out four assists.
“With our guards that can penetrate like Lexi (Carpenter), shooters like Audrey Stapleton are going to benefit,” Rock head coach Bobby McGraw said. “Audrey is arguably the best catch and shoot shooter in the atlantic region. When she catches the ball and shoots it, it goes in. Besides her shooting ability, she is also a great defender and we are going to count on her to take us as far as we need to go this year.”
Senior guard Erica Aiello and sophomore guard Ciara Patterson each helped SRU’s offensive threat by recording four assists each. Both players also wreaked havoc on defense, applying pressure to the Ohio Valley offense while Aiello stole the ball twice and Patterson stole it once.
The Rock showed its team’s depth by scoring 35 points off the bench while holding the Fighting Scots reserves to just four points. Slippery Rock also held the advantage in a couple of hustle statistics, outscoring OVU 11-10 in second chance opportunities and 20-18 points off of turnovers.
As a unit, The Rock out rebounded OVU 38-35 and outscored them 20-16 in the paint. Senior forward Megan Hardiman led SRU with seven rebounds while scoring five points and freshman forward Morgan Henderson pulled in five rebounds with four points. Senior forward Sorriyah Ranger also recorded eight points.
“Ohio Valley’s best player is their center,” McGraw explained. “Charday Pitts is a low caliber Division I talented center. We would have liked to bring her hear but because of budgetary reasons we couldn’t. Sorriyah and Morgan did an unbelievable job guarding her. She only had one point at halftime and was 0-5 from the field. She’s the best scorer in their league and we stopped her and that really set the tone for us.”
Slippery Rock heads to the eastern side of Pennsylvania to play a pair of inter-division conference rivals. The first game is to be played at West Chester (4-3 overall, 2-2 PSAC) on Friday and then the team heads south to Cheyney (0-5 overall. 0-3 PSAC) to take on the Wolves on Saturday.
