COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – In a clash of Centennial Conference unbeatens, the Ursinus College women's basketball team made a statement against the league's preseason favorite, scoring the first 17 points of the game and cruising to a 62-50 victory over McDaniel inside Helfferich Hall. The Bears held the Green Terror scoreless for nearly nine minutes to start the contest and never looked back, extending their best CC start since the 1993-94 season – the conference's inaugural campaign – and gaining a leg up in the league standings.
Senior forward Jessica Porada (Morristown, N.J./Morris Catholic) finished with a team-high 15 points on 7-of-10 shooting and pulled down seven rebounds to lead the Bears, who out-rebounded McDaniel, 44-29. Senior frontcourt mate Elana Roadcloud (Roslyn, Pa./Springside School) corralled a game-high 13 rebounds and scored eight points, while senior guard Alyssa Polimeni (Berkeley Heights, N.J./Governor Livingston Regional) had 13 points, seven rebounds, and five assists. Senior forward Caroline Shimrock (Lansdale, Pa./Gwynedd-Mercy Academy) was perfect from the line (5 of 5) on the way to a 14-point, five-rebound afternoon.
Ursinus (7-5, 6-0) could hardly have asked for a better start. While McDaniel (9-3, 4-1) was missing its first 11 shots, the Bears hit their first six – four of them by Porada – and needed less than seven minutes to open up a 17-0 lead. The Green Terror did not dent the scoreboard until just over a minute remained in the first quarter, and by the time Roadcloud buried a jumper from the left baseline as the buzzer sounded, the Bears were out in front, 19-2. McDaniel was a paltry 1 of 18 (5.6 percent) from the field in the opening stanza, while Porada's ten points helped Ursinus go 9 of 13 (69.2 percent).
The visitors used a 6-0 burst to force Ursinus into a timeout at the 3:26 mark of the second period, still sporting a commanding 25-13 lead. The Bears roared out of the stoppage, uncorking seven unanswered points of their own – the last on a 3-pointer Shimrock – to make it 32-13. After a McDaniel bucket, freshman guard Brielle Clarke (Egg Harbor City, N.J./Absegami) put back her own miss as the buzzer sounded to deliver the red-hot Bears a 34-15 surplus at the half.
The 15 points surrendered by the Bears were their fewest in a single half since Gettysburg managed the same number in the second half of a 51-33 Ursinus victory in 2013.
Ursinus shot 59.3 percent from the field in the first 20 minutes, with Porada going 7 for 10 to lead all scorers with 14 points. Roadcloud had seven rebounds by the end of the first quarter and ten by the break, also adding six points, and Shimrock scored seven points, matching Roadcloud with a 3-of-4 effort in the first half. Green Terror star Lindsey Nichols misfired on her first seven attempts, and Ursinus held McDaniel to a 1-of-13 mark (7.7 percent) from beyond the arc.
The margin remained comfortably in the home side's favor until midway through the fourth quarter, when McDaniel began its push. Nichols connected on a couple deep triples during a 14-4 spurt that closed the gap to 50-42 with 5:35 remaining, but the Bears never wavered. Polimeni drove the right baseline for a momentum-stopping three-point play, kicking off a 12-3 retort that ended with an exclamation point trey from sophomore guard Rachel Guy (Chadds Ford, Pa./Cardinal O'Hara) that made it 62-45 with 1:02 to play.
Nichols, the reigning Centennial Conference Player of the Year and the league's leading scorer, managed a game-high 23 points, but the Bears held her to just 9 of 28 from the floor. Karli Zeps chipped in 16 points for the Green Terror. McDaniel came in second in the league in 3-pointers made, but was only 6 for 24 (25.0 percent) against Ursinus.
Guy scored seven points and Clarke finished with five for Ursinus, which continued to match 10th-ranked Muhlenberg as the lone Centennial Conference teams with unblemished league records after the Mules escaped Johns Hopkins with an overtime triumph on Saturday. McDaniel and Muhlenberg, however, were picked first and third, respectively, in the preseason poll, while Ursinus was slotted sixth. The Bears' victory snapped a three-game skid against McDaniel.
Ursinus seeks to match the longest unbeaten Centennial Conference start in school history with a trip to Dickinson on Tuesday, January 12. Game time is slated for 6:00 p.m.