ALLENTOWN, Pa. – The Ursinus College women's basketball team fell behind early and never recovered in tonight's Centennial Conference contest at nationally ranked Muhlenberg, which stormed out to a 17-1 lead in the first quarter and rolled to a 73-49 victory inside Memorial Hall.
Junior guard Olivia Kane led the way with a season-high ten points, senior guard Alyssa Polimeni added nine, and senior forward Elana Roadcloud grabbed 12 rebounds for Ursinus (7-10, 6-5), which dropped its 15th straight game against Muhlenberg. Junior guard Libby Lannon stuffed the box score with four points, four assists, three rebounds, and three steals.
The Bears played well after halftime, shooting 47.1 percent in the fourth quarter and twice cutting a 30-point Mule lead to 19. Ursinus forced 16 Muhlenberg turnovers and blocked eight shots, outscoring the home side 33-32 in the second half.
Sophomore guard Brandi Vallely, the nation's leader in assists, finished with 15 points and ten assists for Muhlenberg (14-1, 8-1). She fell three rebounds shy of a triple-double, which would have given her the NCAA career record with five; her four such games this year are already the most in NCAA history for a single season. Classmate Rachel Plotke led all scorers with 18 points, all of them coming in the first half.
Muhlenberg, which came in ranked No. 16 in the D3hoops.com poll and No. 12 in the WCBA poll, justified its lofty reputation with a dominant all-around performance. The Mules – who rank inside the top 20 nationally in assists (19.6, 3rd), field-goal percentage defense (.298, 3rd), assist to turnover ratio (1.21, 8th), scoring offense (75.8, 17th), and 3-point percentage (.353, 19th) – held Ursinus to 27.1-percent shooting and led by as much as 30 on the way to their fourth consecutive victory.
Muhlenberg, which is outscoring its opponents by an average of eight points in the first quarter, blitzed the Bears from the opening whistle. Ursinus missed its first 13 shots, and by the time Kane drained a 3 from the top of the key with just 53 seconds remaining in the opening frame, the Mules had opened up a 17-1 discrepancy.
The Bears, to their credit, made their next two from the field to close the period on a 7-0 run, slicing the margin to a more manageable 17-8. But Muhlenberg wasted no time putting the visitors in another deep hole, as Plotke buried triples on back-to-back possessions to open the second stanza. That was part of a 13-2 spurt that stretched the bulge to 20, and the high-powered Mules led by as much as 27 before hitting the locker room with a 41-16 halftime surplus.
Muhlenberg looked every bit the part of a national powerhouse in the first half. The Mules limited Ursinus to a 6-of-36 effort from the field (16.7 percent) while shooting 51.6 percent themselves (16 of 31) and handing out 10 assists to just four turnovers. Vallely had eight dimes in the first half alone, and Plotke finished the frame with 18 points.
Ursinus put up a game fight in the second half, running step for step with the explosive Mules. Freshman guard Kaci McNeave knocked down the second 3-pointer of her career early in the third quarter for the Bears, and she added a jumper during a 12-5 fourth-quarter spurt that cut the deficit to 64-45 and gave her a season-best five points.
The Bears look to get back on the winning path with a road trip to Swarthmore on Tuesday, February 2.