Spiders' season ends with loss to Seahawks in WNIT

The Richmond women's basketball season came to an end on St. Patrick's Day, fittingly to a team sporting green jerseys.

Unable to overcome their 31 turnovers, the Spiders fell to the lower-seeded University of North Carolina-Wilmington 63-54 in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament.

Richmond's leading scorer for the game was senior Crystal Goring with 17 points. She also tied for the team lead with 7 rebounds. The loss ends Goring's collegiate career, as it does for fellow seniors Brittani Shells and Kara Powell.

Shells finished the game with 13 points and 4 assists, but turned the ball over a game-high 8 times. She was forced to watch her collegiate career end from the bench as a foot injury sidelined Richmond's second all-time leading scorer for the last 10 minutes.

Also, watching the game end from the sideline was Powell, Richmond's usual starting point guard, as she missed the game with an injury suffered in their previous game.

"We missed [Powell] because we needed one more ball handler on the floor," Goring said. "It would've been easier to break the pressure and we'd have had more chances of actually taking the ball and scoring."

Richmond hadn't played a game in 12 days prior to the contest. The 31 turnovers by the Spiders were the most this season.

"In some ways you can think about the fact that we haven't played in two weeks, so it's a lot of rust and stuff," said Goring on the high amount of turnovers. "It was all on us. It wasn't like [UNC-Wilmington was] pressuring us to actually get the turnovers that we did. It's just mental mistakes we had as a team."

The Spiders burst out to a 10-0 lead to start the game, but the Seahawks weathered the early storm and Richmond held just a two point lead going into halftime, 28-26.

UNC-Wilmington came out in the second half and began on a 12-4 run to take the lead and Richmond couldn't retake the lead after that.

Richmond finishes the season with an 18-12 record, while UNC-Wilmington moves on to play Eastern Michigan in the second round of the NIT.

Game Notes: This was UNC-Wilmington's first trip to a postseason tournament in team history...Richmond forward Genevieve Okoro fouled out of the game with 6:50 left in the game...UNC-Wilmington had 23 turnovers of their own.

Contact reporter David Weissman at david.weissman@richmond.edu