Feb. 16, 2007
Final Stats
BALTIMORE, Md. - The Marist women's basketball team had its 12-game winning streak snapped with a 62-55 loss to Loyola on Friday. Red-shirt sophomore guard Julianne Viani (Poughkeepsie, N.Y.) led the Red Foxes with 14 points on 6-for-11 shooting from the field. The Red Foxes fell to 21-5 overall and 14-1 in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, while the Greyhounds improved to 16-9 overall and 11-4 in the MAAC. Marist's last loss had been an 86-60 defeat to Maryland, then the top-ranked team in the country, on Dec. 30.
The Red Foxes got off to a good start, scoring the game's first five points and hitting their first six shots from the field. The sixth, a basket by Viani, gave Marist a 13-6 lead with 13:43 left in the first half. It would be the largest lead Marist would have in the game, and the Red Foxes shot just 5-for-24 from the field the rest of the first half.
The first half included five lead changes and three ties, and a basket by Loyola senior guard Jill Glessner with 1:30 in the first half gave the Greyhounds their largest edge of the first 20 minutes at 30-24. With neither team scoring in the final 90 seconds of the half, the Greyhounds had a six-point halftime lead.
Marist opened the second half by hitting its first five field-goal attempts. The fifth, which came from freshman forward Rachele Fitz (Seven Hills, Ohio) tied the game at 36 apiece with 14:27 to play. However, the Red Foxes went scoreless over the next 4:54, and Loyola reeled off seven consecutive points in that span. Marist never tied the game again.
Junior forward Sarah Smrdel (Mentor, Ohio) hit her second three-pointer in as many possessions to cut the Loyola lead to 46-42 with 8:25 to play. Junior guard Nikki Flores (Montvale, N.J.) then scored the next six points for the Red Foxes, cutting the Marist deficit to two on three separate occasions, the last of which came with 4:36 to play. Fitz's basket with 2:50 to play brought the Red Foxes to within two again with 2:50 left, but Loyola put the game away by going on an 8-0 run over the next 2:30. In that run, freshman forward Kaitlin Grant and Glessner scored four points apiece for the Greyhounds.
Red-shirt junior center Vika Sholokhova led Loyola with 21 points and 11 rebounds. Although Sholokhova shot just 6-for-21 from the field, she hit three three-pointers and also added three steals and two blocked shots. Sholokhova scored 14 points in the second half. All three of her three-pointers came in the second half.
The Red Foxes shot .434 from the field (23-for-53), while the Greyhounds shot .408 (20-for-49). The loss snapped a streak of 37 consecutive games Marist had won when having a higher shooting percentage than the opponent. Loyola was 18-for-21 from the free-throw line, while Marist was just 5-for-10. The Greyhounds also finished with 35 rebounds to the Red Foxes' total of 26.
Flores gave the Red Foxes two scorers in double digits with 11. Smrdel and Fitz added eight apiece, and Fitz led Marist with six rebounds.
Marist will return to the McCann Center for a contest against Rider on Monday at 7 p.m. Tickets to Marist women's basketball home games can be purchased online by logging on to GoRedFoxes.com, at the Marist ticket office or by calling (845) 575-3553.
