On Friday night at Whalen Gymnasium in a nationally televised game and with the biggest crowd that they have had all year, the Fort Lewis College Skyhawks women’s basketball team defeated the Colorado School of the Mines Orediggers 72-60 to move into sole possession of fourth place in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference.
With the win, the Skyhawks improve to 19-6,14-6 in the RMAC, and drop Mines into a perilous spot at 15-13, 11-8 in the RMAC, and making it a very tough road to make the playoffs.
The Skyhawks started out the game looking frazzled by the Mines defense. Mines was playing man but switching all on ball screens and getting their hands in the passing lanes to try and disrupt FLC’s ball movement and off-ball cutting. Even with this strategy being effective, the Skyhawks held a 13-11 lead at the end of the first quarter.
The Skyhawks hit their stride in the second quarter, holding Mines scoreless for nearly the first 5 minutes of the period and opening their lead to 10 points in that stretch. The Skyhawks had a 14-4 run at one point and went into halftime leading 34-23 with the Skyhawks redshirt-freshman guard Kayla Herrara leading all scorers with 17 points.
In the first half, nearly half of Mines’ points came from Junior forward Liz Tomon. She had 11 points at the break, 15 by the end of the game and uncharacteristically made two three-pointers after only making eight total to this point in the season.
Mines was not going to roll over for the Skyhawks though. The Orediggers came out of halftime on fire cutting their deficit from 11 to four in the first five minutes of the quarter. The Skyhawks seemingly came out of halftime with the intent to not let Toman beat them, but when they stopped her, the other players started to step up and give the Skyhawks trouble.
FLC got back on track in the last five minutes of the quarter though and regained a nine point advantage heading into the final period of play, 49-40.
The Orediggers made another run at the Skyhawks at the beginning of the quarter, making the score 52-48 with just about seven minutes left in the game.
It is often said in basketball that the first and last five minutes of each half are the most important and to the Skyhawks, the last five minutes are when they pulled away for good. The Skyhawks had great ball movement and made timely free throws and pulled out the 72-60 victory.
Kayla Herrera was truly the catalyst for the Skyhawks in this game. She came up with multiple timely plays and ended the game with a game-high 27 points while going 5-7 from behind the three-point line.
The Lady Orediggers played a good game and it could have been a lot different had a few shots went their way. Mines ended the game shooting an abysmal 27.5 percent from the field and 15.4 percent from behind the arc.
This is a very big win for the Skyhawks as they look to extend their winning streak to four games when they play Adams State at home in Whalen Gymnasium on Tuesday. This game is also senior night and with only one senior, Ande Lampert, on the team, the Skyhawks will surely want to send her off with a bang.