Team gathers after winning the Northeast 10 Championship Title
by AJ Berube
edited by Casey Williams
The Women’s Basketball team accomplished one of their huge pre-season goals on Sunday as they won the NE-10 Championship Title for the second year in a row, defeating Stonehill 70-59.
Stonehill College traveled to the Fieldhouse to take on the Ravens in front of a packed audience on Sunday afternoon. Coming off of their semi-final victory against Bentley, the Ravens had a rough start to the title game, allowing Stonehill to shoot 53 percent from the field in the first half.
The Raven’s made 43 percent of the shots they took in the first, anchored by senior Johannah Leedham, who led all scorers with 14 first-half points. Despite Leedham’s impressive numbers the Ravens ended the half trailing Stonehill 35-37.
One main threat for Stonehill was center Kelsey Simonds. The 6’3” senior from Middleboro Mass. had 11 points, three rebounds, two steals and a block in the first half. She finished the game with 17 points.
In the second half, the Ravens came out of the locker room on fire, shooting 42 percent from the field and holding the Stonehill attack to only 21 percent shooting. Leading the way was sophmore forward Jewel White. Starting for the injured Tori Ahrens, White scored 15 points while pulling down an amazing season-high 23 rebounds. She also had two steals and three assists.
White said, “We worked all really hard and at the end of the game free throws and tough defense won it for us.”
The 23 rebounds that White ended the game with were a career high for her, as well as being two shy of the tournament record. Head coach Steve Hancock had nothing but good things to say about his player’s performance.
“Jewel has been playing well in the backup roll all season,” said Hancock. ”But when Tori went down with that knee injury, Jewel had to step up and start playing 30-plus minutes per game. She just did an incredible job, and was outstanding throughout the entire tournament.”
Fresh off nailing her name in history as the all time leading scorer in Division II Women’s Basketball, Leedham led the game in scoring with 31 points along with seven rebounds, one assist and two steals. Leading the game in assists was junior guard Cynthia Gaudet with seven.
Being a 35 percent three-point shooting team, the Ravens were held to only 19 percent from beyond the arc all game. The only three-point shots scored by the Ravens in the game were by Leedham and Amanda Sabb, each with one a piece.
The second-ranked woman’s basketball team is set to host NCAA Division II Women’s East Regional at Fitchburg State College, starting Friday when they will take on Nyack in the opening round at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $7 for adults and $5 for children, seniors, and college students with an I.D.