NORTHFIELD, Minn. – The St. Olaf College women's basketball team could not overcome a third-quarter scoring drought in a 62-54 loss to the College of Saint Benedict on Monday evening at Skoglund Center.
St. Olaf (3-9, 2-7 MIAC) held a 22-21 lead after a low-scoring first half, but Saint Ben's (8-3, 5-4 MIAC) held the Oles to four points in the third quarter to open up a 37-26 lead. The 11-point deficit was too much for St. Olaf to overcome in the fourth quarter despite the Oles putting up 28 points over the final 10 minutes.
Sophia Jonas led the Bennies with a game-high 23 points, shooting 7-for-12 from the field and 5-for-8 from behind the arc. Tori Szathmary logged a double-double of 15 points and 12 rebounds, while Gabby Martin added 11 points, four rebounds, four assists, and five steals for the visitors.
Senior
K'Lynn Lewis paced the Oles with 13 points, while junior
Cassie Fix had a season-high 12 points to go with five rebounds, five assists, three steals, and two blocks. Junior
Sophie Olmen narrowly missed out on a double-double with nine points and 10 rebounds, six of which came on the offensive end.
Lewis made her first two shots from the field to score five early points as St. Olaf took a 9-6 lead early one. A late layup by first year
Sarah Tangen helped the Oles to a 13-10 advantage after an opening quarter where St. Olaf held Saint Ben's to 4-for-17 (23.5 percent) shooting from the field. Szathmary had eight of CSB's 10 points in the quarter.
Back-to-back baskets by Olmen gave St. Olaf its largest lead of the game at 17-10 with less than two minutes gone in the second quarter, but Saint Ben's stuck around. After the Bennies cut their deficit to three, a Lewis three-pointer with 4:39 remaining in the quarter pushed the Oles' lead back to six before CSB scored the quarter's final five points to make it a one-point game at the half.
In the third, Saint Ben's held St. Olaf scoreless until Fix hit a pair of shots in the paint in the final 41 seconds. The Bennies scored the first 14 points of the quarter to build their largest lead of the night at 35-22 with 2:17 remaining before taking a 37-26 lead into the fourth.
After shooting just 28.6 percent (12-for-42) over the first three quarters, St. Olaf was 11-for-23 (47.8 percent) from the field in the fourth but was unable to overcome the 11-point deficit. Three-pointers by Lewis and Olmen in the first 2:32 of the quarter quickly got the Oles within five, 39-34, but CSB used a 7-0 run midway through the quarter to push its lead back to 12 with 3:19 to go. First year
Paige Yagodinski hit a pair of three-pointers in the final 2:35 before Jonas hit four-straight free throws down the stretch to seal the win for Saint Ben's.
St. Olaf heads to the College of St. Scholastica on Wednesday, Jan. 12 for the first Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) meeting between the two programs. Tip-off is slated for 7 p.m. in Duluth.
