Isis Young scores a career-high 23 points to lead the Siena women past Rider./
Siena graduate point guard Isis Young said she didn’t believe the Saints were playing a game against Rider on Saturday until teammate Lala Watts won the opening tip into Young’s hands.
Young can be forgiven for her extreme skepticism. Just a week ago, the Saints drove all the way to Buffalo only to find out on game day their two-game series with Canisius was postponed because the Golden Griffins had a positive COVID-19 test.
“Seriously, I think at any moment it can be taken away from you, so it’s increasing our mental toughness as a team, which is great,” Young said. “We’re a lot of veterans, we’re very old, so I’m proud of the way we were able to get a win after not playing for almost a month.”
Young scored a career-high 23 points, including a key 3-pointer in the fourth quarter, and Siena earned its first victory of the season with a 73-64 triumph over Rider at Alumni Recreation Center on Saturday afternoon.
Siena (1-2 overall, 1-2 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference) played its first game in a month since suffering a two-game sweep against Fairfield on Dec. 11 and 12. After that, the Saints had a positive test within their program and had to go on pause for 14 days.
Then came the disappointment of not playing at Canisius last week.
“Yeah, that was a lot,” Young said. “I think the bus ride back was pretty sad. Obviously, we had waited, what, three weeks to play. … It was sad. I’m not going to lie. I think the next day at practice we were kind of dragging because we were just tired of playing against each other, you know? I think the next day we just realized, hey, we’ve got to get ready for our game.”
The Saints were originally supposed to play at Quinnipiac this weekend, but that series got flipped with Rider because of COVID-19 interruptions within the MAAC.
The Saints shot 60 percent in the second quarter on Saturday to build a 51-33 halftime lead over the Broncs (1-11, 0-7), a far different team than the one that won 26 games a year ago. Rider graduated star Stella Johnson and several other players.
But the Broncs rallied to within 61-55 on Lenaejha Evans’ 3-pointer with 3:35 to play.
Siena hadn’t scored in the fourth quarter to that point, but Young ended that drought with a 3-pointer to make it 64-55 with 3:11 left.
Young surpassed her career high of 20 points set when she played for Syracuse during the 2017-18 season. She spent last year at Fordham but didn’t play because of injury.
“I think she’s capable of much more as well,” Siena coach Ali Jaques said. “I think she’s still getting her legs underneath her.
She and I need to be on the same page more and that’s going to come with game experience. I’m really proud of the fact in some ways she was unproven as far as how she’s going to handle pressure situations and she did a great job of getting to the foul line.”
Though Young shot 5-for-19 from the field, she also made 9 of 12 from the line, including two with 1:16 left to help seal the victory.
Siena senior guard Rayshel Brown added 16 points and seven rebounds and Watts had nine points and 12 rebounds.
“For me, I’m just glad we got to play a game,” Watts said. “It’s not been easy for the past month not being able to play.”
They’ll get to do it again when Siena plays Rider at the ARC at 1 p.m. Sunday.