Ben Martin – Contributor
With the Owls up 48-33 late in the third quarter, a scare occurred for the team. The Owls leading scorer on the day forward, Katie Williamson, Junior, committed her fourth foul of the game. One more would send her to the bench for good.
Directly after the foul, Owls head Coach Kate Lynch went to the bench, calling upon Forward, Ashley Evans, junior. Williamson, who would eventually foul out at the 4:19 mark in the fourth quarter, rode the bench from 43 seconds left in the third quarter till the 4:48 mark in the fourth. Instead of allowing losing their leading scorer to weigh them down, the Owls showed the power of a balanced scoring attack which lead the way to their 67-54 victory on Saturday.
In the time Williamson sat, guard Zoe Amalbert, senior, would score nine of her 17 points. Along with Williamson and Amalbert, guard Isabella Santoro, graduate student, was the third Owl in double figures, scoring 13 points in the contest.
“We don’t have just one person that we have to have as our go to,” Amalbert said. “We have four, five or six players, we have people off the bench who can come in and give us a spark, so that is helpful against good teams.”
Along with seeing the importance of having multiple players in double figures for scoring, Amalbert sees the importance of working together on the court.
“I feel good about it, I just give it to my teammates,” Amalbert, the newest member of the Owls 1,000 point club, said about her personal performance. “They find me when I’m open and since we’ve been playing together since October I know where they want the ball and where it benefits them to score.”
Along with Amalbert, Coach Lynch saw the importance in having multiple players in double figures. She credited most of it as a result of the teams senior leadership and sees it as an improvement for the Owls.
However, Lynch’s biggest key to the win was the teams energy level throughout.
“The biggest thing for us was the energy that we had for 40 minutes,” Lynch said. “I think that’s really the difference when you are playing in conference is having that consistent energy.”
Along with Lynch, Santoro saw the high energy as a key to success for the team.
“I think we did a really great job of just having energy and hustle out there,” Santoro said. “For the full 40 minutes, we did not let up.”
That energy showed for Santoro as she had eight rebounds from the guard spot and contributed many second chance points on her road to 13 points in the contest.
Santoro was not the only Owls hustling, the Owls ended with 40 of their 67 points coming in the paint. In addition the Owls out rebounded the Panthers 45-30 with key contributions from forward Renza Milner, sophomore with nine, Amalbert with six and Williamson with five.
“We just need to keep plugging away,” Amalbert said. “When we come out with good energy, we can do anything.”
The Owls feature three more games on their schedule all matchups in the Northeast 10 conference. The matchups include 14-11 American International College and 20-4 Assumption University. Winning these matchups would help the Owls gain a better seed in the Northeast 10 Conference tournament.
The Owls need to bring the energy to win these matchups.
“You know we haven’t seen that type of energy all year,” Lynch said. “When our team shows up like that its fun to watch, its fun to coach. We’re just trying to extend our season as much as we can for as long as we can.”
Photos by: Luke Molwitz
