WCU continues dominance over Wolves

The West Chester women topped Cheyney on the basketball court for the 20th straight time on Saturday, and for the 32nd time in a row at Hollinger Field House. But the Golden Rams 75-64 victory certainly wasn’t a breeze.

The visiting Wolves held a slight lead early in the final period and pushed WCU to the very end for first-year head coach Tammy Bagley. The Rams, meanwhile, did not have head coach Kiera Wooden, who missed the game following an unspecified medical procedure.

“Coach Wooden is fine health-wise, and she’ll be back the next game. Don’t worry – I’m 1-0 and I am staying 1-0,” laughed assistant coach Allison Hostetter, who filled in. “I respect her for putting enough trust in me to take on this role. But I want her back and I think the team does.

“It was a tough situation for our players, too.”

Without Wooden, playing a highly motivated crosscounty rival, and coming off a 34-point loss at Shippensburg that what Wooden termed the worst performance in her 17 years at WCU as both a player and coach, the Rams had some adversity to overcome.

“It was good that we bounced back quick,” said forward Madison Torresin, who had a monster outing. “We talked about putting that Shippensburg game was behind us.”

It took a while, however, as West Chester got off to a sluggish start against surging Cheyney, who registered the first home victory under Bagley just three days earlier.

“We can’t look back or fix what happened at Shippensburg, but if we wanted to move forward and get to where we want to be, we had to take care of business against Cheyney,” Hostetter said. “They are a good team. They just came off a big a big win against Lock Haven, and their zone gives us problems.”

Looking for long stretches best player in the floor, CU’s TaKayla Ellis poured in 11 of her teamhigh 27 points in the third period as the Wolves erased an eight point halftime deficit. But West Chester reestablished control with an 11-3 rally that started midway through the final period, and Torresin was at the heart of it all.

The junior knocked down two of her five 3-pointers on the day, and added two rebounds and a steal in the final 6:15 as the Rams proceeded to close it out. She finished with 27 points, grabbed 14 rebounds and played 34 minutes.

“I stayed confident with my shot, my teammates kept feeding me the ball and I took the open shots,” said Torresin, who was 11for-19 from the field.

“That’s a nice doubledouble, but she is capable of that every game,” Hostetter added. “She came up big.”

The Wolves (2-9) got off to a terrific start, and opened a double digit lead – and forced a WCU timeout – just 2:46 into the game. Frustration boiled over when the Rams’ Courtney Wanner was assessed a technical foul early in the 2nd quarter with West Chester down by nine.

But the Rams’ Camden Boehner promptly hit a couple 3-pointers to spark a 21-4 surge to end the half, putting WCU ahead, 39-31. Boehner notched eight of her 20 points during a 13-0 run that put West Chester ahead.

“It all started with the technical. We came together as a team and said, ‘we are playing for us and for coach (Wooden),’” Torresin said.

“Cheyney is a local rival and sometimes it’s a physical game,” Hostetter agreed. “We needed something to wake us up, and unfortunately it took a technical to do that.”

Quinniea Gross chipped in 14 for the Wolves, but she was the only player to significantly help Ellis with the scoring load. The Cheyney defense forced 25 turnovers, and CU turned them into 20 points.

“We have a good core of young ladies who are definitely buying in,” Bagley said. “We are trying to instill in them a winning mentality right now.

“We had a couple defensive assignments that got away from us. We are going to get that corrected. Our wins so far came from solid defense and rebounding. Right now we just love, but once we fall in love with playing defense, that’s the recipe for winning championships.”

Now 6-9 overall, WCU remains in second place in the PSAC East at 6-5. Porscha Speller added 15 points and a team-high five assists for the Rams.