FSU Falcons fall hard to Bridgewater St., 102-67
FSU with no answers in blowout loss
Try as they might, the Falcons never could find answers during Wednesday night’s women’s basketball game against Bridgewater State.
No answers for the Bears’ potent offense. No answer on consistent scoring when they had the ball. No answers on the interior against an opponent with a distinct edge in size and experience.
And while the effort was there all night for Fitchburg State, drive alone wasn’t enough to secure a victory, as Bridgewater State left the Recreation Center with a 10267 MASCAC win in hand.
“This is back-to-back games for us that our interior play has been really, really good,” said Bridgewater State head coach Bridgett Casey, whose team was coming off a 111-108 victory over Westfield State on Saturday. “We don’t usually score that much. Our last game, it was kind of the nature of the game, but (Wednesday night) we were able to put it all together.”
The Bears (7-10, 3-1) were led by Destiny Fitzgerald, who had 18 points and seven rebounds, four of which came on the offensive end. On the night, Bridgewater outrebounded FSU 43-33, pulling down a dozen offensive boards.
“We’ve been trying to find Fitzgerald a little bit more and she’s been hitting more,” Casey said. “She had been struggling for the first part of the year.”
Olivia Dziadyk added 15 points in the victory and Kylee Piche (12) and Nicole Bostick (10) also scored in double-figures.
The Falcons were paced by senior Catherine Coppinger, who notched a double-double with 16 points and 11 rebounds.
“Even though we’ve got some upperclassmen, we’re a fairly inexperienced team,” first-year
Falcons head coach Laura Pierce said. “We got down early and had trouble coming back from that. We’ve got to understand it’s possession by possession and it’s not all going to happen at once and that we have to stick to the game plan.
“(Fitzgerald) was coming off a big game against Westfield, so we wanted to limit her touches, but they’ve got a good team. We defended how we wanted at times, but we need to be more consistent.”
Fitchburg State (4-12, 2-2) was its own worst enemy at times, turning the ball over 22 times in the contest, which led to 36 Bridgewater points. In addition, the Falcons allowed 20 second-chance points, including 16 in the opening half.
The Falcons never led in the contest, but never hung their heads. The hosts twice cut Bridgewater’s lead to 14 in the third before the guests answered with pushes of their own.
“The big difference for us from first semester to second semester is that we didn’t give up,” Pierce said. “Even after halftime, I felt that we could make a run and come back a bit. Every time we made a run (Wednesday night), they had an answer. Bridgewater played well (Wednesday night).”
In the fourth quarter, the Bears pushed a 81-61 advantage into the territory of a complete and total blowout, going on a 12-0 run over a two-minute span, highlighted by a pair of Dziadyk 3-pointers.
Kayley Lacombe’s 3 with 11 seconds remaining put the Bears over the century mark and their largest lead at 102-65.
Samantha Maglione’s jumper as time expired accounted for the final margin.
Payton Holmes chipped in with 11 points for Fitchburg State, while Lindsay McDonald, Jadelen Harold and Emma Thomson each chipped in with eight in the loss.