FAIRFIELD, CONN. (March 8, 2015)—Sacred Heart women's basketball's two seniors Gabrielle Washington (Mesa, Ariz.) and Katie Shepard (Lone Tree, Colo.) led the Pioneers with 18 and 15 points respectively as SHU was knocked out of the Northeast Conference Tournament Sunday afternoon with the 77-59 loss to St. Francis Brooklyn. The Pioneers finish the season 16-13 after posting an 11-7 regular season conference record.
Hannah Kimmel (Harpursville, N.Y.) landed back-to-back threes to tie the game at six after SFBK took an early lead on Pioneer errors. On the next play, Adaysha Williams (LaCrosse, Wis.) found the lane giving SHU its first lead of the game with a layup as part of Sacred Heart's 13-2 run, which catapulted the Pioneers to a 16-8 lead.
Going 4-for-4 from the charity stripe in the first half, Alissa Tarsi (Clinton, N.J.) gave the Pioneers their largest lead of the half, 24-12, with a pair for free throws at the 10:12 marker.
The Terriers used a 15-5 run to come within one point of catching Sacred Heart, and with less than two minutes left in the half, Eilidh Simpson landed a triple from the right wing to even the score at 35, but soon after with a minute and seven second remaining Jaymee Veney got called for a foul sending Katherine Haines (Ridgefield Park, N.J.) to the line where she landed both shots once again giving the Pioneers the advantage.
Derda Cassidy sent the Terriers into the halftime break with a one-point lead going three-for-three at the foul line with 3.2 seconds left.
The teams opened the second half trading buckets seeing the lead change hands four times in the first two minutes before Sarah Benedetti's jumper sparked an eight-point Terrier run giving SFBK a 49-42 lead forcing Sacred Heart Head Coach Jessica Mannetti to call a timeout just before the 15-minute mark.
Down 49-44, SHU used a 6-1 run to cut the Terriers' lead to just two points, 50-48 by the 11:47 media timeout, but were unable to catch St. Francis who continued to expand its lead in the second half. With 4:36 remaining in the game, Veney gave the Terriers a 10-point lead with two shots from the foul line that the Pioneers could never recover from.
