The University of Richmond Spiders women's basketball team suffered a 53-49 loss to the visiting St. Bonaventure Bonnies on Saturday afternoon. Coming into the series, Richmond led the all-time series, 10-6.
The Spiders were forced to play without freshman star, Olivia Healy, which head coach Michael Shafer noted was a big loss.
"We spent the last week trying to get [Healy] in position to score, and not having her in the line-up tonight, we didn't have a lot of time to tweak that," Shafer said.
Richmond tried to pick up the slack by relying heavily on Janelle Hubbard, whom Shafer believed had recently been picking up her game. Hubbard, a freshman, was effective early on, scoring 11 of the team's first 15 points. She finished with a game-high 19 points and was adamant about using her pull-up jump shot.
Late in the first half, the Bonnies went on a 10-0 run, but the Spiders gained momentum going into the second half, as senior Amber Nichols, drained a bank shot three-pointer to give the Spiders the 27-25 lead at the half.
Richmond and St. Bonaventure went back and forth several times in the second half and toward the middle of the second half, Richmond found themselves up 37-36. They continued on that run and took a five-point lead to go up 44-39 with about nine minutes left in regulation.
As the game progressed, Richmond fell into a hole, trailing 51-46 with less than 90 seconds to play in the game. They missed several opportunities to score, and while they appeared to execute their schemes, they could not convert.
"Other kids need to step up... Kids need to take new roles... Assignments are going to come to them and they need to be able to take those on," Shafer said.
With the victory over the Spiders, the Bonnies improved to 16-6 on the year and 5-2 in the Atlantic 10 conference play, while the Spiders dropped to 9-11 overall and 3-4 in conference play. Richmond visits La Salle University next Wednesday in another A-10 slate.
Contact reporter Richard Sherman at richard.sherman@richmond.edu
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