The Massachusetts Women’s Basketball team had a second quarter to remember, as that was enough to defeat Monmouth 76-53 on Friday night. The Minutewomen now improve to 2-2 on the season and are riding a two-game winning streak.
UMass started well, scoring nine points in the first five minutes of the opening quarter, but this Minutewomen team has created a trend of going into scoring droughts. Monmouth ended the quarter on a 6-0 run and held UMass scoreless for the last five minutes of the first. Shooting only 18 percent in the first, the Minutewomen made a statement in the second quarter to win the game.
It all started with Megan Olbrys scoring two layups to cut the lead to one. Freshman center Jess Ross scored the first points of her collegiate career to give UMass the lead 15-14. Ross shined in the extended minutes she saw in the game, with starting center Aleah Sorrentino in foul trouble. Ross grabbed seven boards and two blocks in the second and had six points, nine rebounds and four assists overall.
After that, the Minutewomen were in full control of the game. Yahmani McKayle and Stefanie Kulesza led the scoring in the second, with each scoring seven points. McKayle finished the game with 17 points, shot 7-of-12 from the court, 50 percent from three and had six assists. Kulesza led the team in rebounds with eight and finished with 10 points. UMass ended the second on a 10-0 run to extend the lead to 15 going into halftime.
“I’m really proud of our group, just shared that with them in the locker room,” head coach Mike Leflar said. “Today, I really challenged them, they have some big and individual team goals. I said we’ve had to take a step forward just mentality-wise, tonight was a big opportunity for us to do that.”
Monmouth kept on fighting with a strong third-quarter performance outscoring UMass 24-16, and trailed by seven points going into the fourth quarter. However, UMass responded with an onslaught of buckets to close out the game. Olbrys scored 10 of her 20 points in the closing quarter. Olbrys led the team in scoring, shooting 7-of-12 from the court, perfect from the free-throw line and grabbed five rebounds.
The win shared a similar theme in the Minutewomen’s first win of the season, with UMass dominating the paint scoring 40 of their 76 points from there. Along with points in the paint, the Minutewomen got a good performance from their bench with 16 points. Momo LeClair led the bench in scoring with eight points, shot 2-of-2 from three, and two assists and rebounds.
“We want to stay aggressive on the offensive end,” Leflar said. “When the ball’s moving we’re at our best and showed that against Central Connecticut [we] had 21 assists and had 19 assists tonight. We have the ability to have four and five players out there who are threats to score double figures and they have to just keep thinking ‘share the basketball’.”
The defense played an important part in the win, especially in the second quarter where Monmouth only scored five points shooting under 13 percent. UMass held Monmouth to 33 percent shooting in the game and forced 17 turnovers, 10 steals and three blocks.
“We just wanted to play a little more of our zone,” Leflar said. “We typically go 2-2-1 pressure into 2-3 zone, and some teams have gotten us on the press and we haven’t been able to get into the zone, so I think in the halfcourt it was more like ‘hey, let’s settle in and just take off the press at times, play some zone,’ I think that was effective.”
UMass looks to extend their win streak to three, as they take on Holy Cross on Wednesday, Nov. 20 at 6 p.m. in the Mullins Center.
