No. 16 WashU Secures 67-59 Win Over Brandeis In Final Road Regular Season Contest
Playing in its final regular season road contest, the No. 16 Washington University in St. Louis women's basketball team used a late fourth-quarter push to leave Brandeis with a 67-59 win on Sunday afternoon.
Junior Lexy Harris finished with a game-high 22 points, narrowly outscoring teammate junior Alyssa Hughes' 21 points. Senior Jordan Rich had a team-high seven rebounds in the win.
The contest started with a flurry of scoring, with the teams trading the lead. Hughes got things started for the Bears with a three-pointer just 13 seconds into the game before the Judges answered with one of their own less than 20 seconds later. After Brandeis hit a pair of free throws, Hughes hit her second three of the quarter to tie the score at 6-6 with 8:16 remaining.
Back-and-forth layups followed before a pair of free throws from Harris gave WashU a 12-11 lead with 6:41 left in the period. Hughes extended that lead to four with her third three-pointer of the game at 6:00, making it 15-11. It was over two minutes before either team scored, with Brandeis making a free throw at 3:59.
Despite the scoring cooling off, WashU maintained their lead, 20-17, with 50 seconds remaining in the quarter. A pair of Judges free throws with 31 seconds remaining cut the lead down to one heading to the second quarter.
In a near reversal of the early portion of the first quarter, the second started with just one basket by Harris at 9:42 and a layup from junior Amelia Rosin at 7:23, which saw WashU extend their lead to five. The Judges finally scored at 6:35, after a nearly four-minute scoring drought to cut the lead down to 24-22.
A layup and a pair of Bears' free throws pushed the lead to six with just over five minutes until halftime, 28-22. The Judges responded with an 8-3 run to trim the lead down to 31-30 with 2:28 remaining, before tying the score at 31-31 on a made free throw with just over a minute left.
Hughes closed out the first half with her fourth three-pointer of the game with 43 seconds remaining before the teams headed to the locker rooms, giving WashU a three-point lead at the break, 34-31.
Brandeis came out of the break with a strong defensive effort, holding the Bears to just four points in the first five minutes while scoring 11 of their own to take a four-point lead over the Bears at 5:10 of the third quarter.
The lead was extended to as many as six before a pair of free throws by Harris at 1:25 trimmed the lead down to just two, 46-44. The Judges then got two free throws of their own to take a four-point advantage into the fourth quarter.
Once again, Brandeis made a strong push to start the final quarter, extending their lead to seven with 7:09 left in the game. An 8-0 run by WashU saw them regain the lead on a layup and free throw from sophomore Ava Blagojevich with 5:34 remaining.
After a Judges' layup at 3:46 put them back up by two, 57-55, the Bears closed out the game on a 10-2 run, capped by a pair of free throws by junior Sidney Rogers with 41 seconds left, as WashU picked up the eight-point win, 67-59.
WashU returns home on Saturday, Feb. 28, for the final home game of the regular season, when the Bears take on Chicago at 3 p.m.
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