Vermont women's basketball turns in season-high scoring vs. NJIT
The University of Vermont women’s basketball team saw its fourth quarter lead wilt away to just five. And then the Catamounts’ offense flipped off the breaks.
Paula Gonzalez and Delaney Richason swished back-to-back triples to highlight a 15-point swing over three minutes as Vermont tallied its season-high scoring total in an 85-73 win over New Jersey Institute of Technology on Saturday afternoon at Patrick Gym.
“It was nice to see the offense really flowing, we scored a lot of points which was great,” Vermont coach Alisa Kresge said. “But we’ve got to clean it up on the defensive end, we're challenging them to put both sides of the ball together.”
The Catamounts (20-6, 12-2) scored 41-second half points, shot 52.5% from the floor (7 of 11 from three) and were led by Richason and Emma Utterback’s 21 points apiece. Anna Olson added 15 points, five rebounds and four assists.
UVM secured its second of back-to-back 20-win seasons for the first time since 2007-2009 with 1,216 fans in attendance. Ten different Catamounts contributed to the season high as Vermont won for the 12th consecutive time with two games to go in the regular season.
“I think we really evaluated ourselves after UNH, it just seemed like we were second guessing, we were tight, we weren’t playing Vermont basketball,” Kresge said after the Catamounts managed just 43 points in their previous game.
After NJIT’s Kenna Squier opened the fourth stanza with a pair of jumpers, Kiana Brereton canned a trey from the top of the key to cut a 10-point lead to just 66-61 with 7:33 remaining. Utterback, driving right, answered with a bucket in the paint. And an Olson free throw and layup pushed the lead back to 10, before Gonzalez and Richason closed the door with 3s.
Richason tied her career-high in points and Utterback tallied her fifth 20-point finish of the season.
“Delaney has been really, really solid for us on both sides of the ball,” Kresge said. “And we need that, we talk a lot about having at least four double-digit scorers and Delaney is definitely one of those four that we're leaning on.”
With the win Vermont clinched at least the two-seed in the conference tournament.
Kenna Squier (18 points, 5 rebounds), Trinity Williams (15 points) and Alejandra Zuniga (13 points, 6 rebounds, 4 assists) paced NJIT.
Vermont travels to Binghamton on Wednesday.
Contact Jacob Rousseau at JRousseau@gannett.com. Follow on Twitter: @ByJacobRousseau
This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Vermont women's basketball turns in season-high scoring vs. NJIT
