By SPENCER BATES
DAYTON, OH — The St. Bonaventure women’s basketball team were eyeing a big win to bring a halt to its recent losing skid.
That so nearly ended up being the case, but despite a 29-point performance from Laycee Drake, the Bonnies suffered a 75-71 loss on the road at Dayton.
Last time out, against George Mason, Bona head coach Jim Crowley made the decision to pull his starters early in the second half as they only continued to allow La Salle to run riot offensively. The bench unit he put in played tremendously as they accounted for a grand majority of the 47 bench points the team recorded and almost pulled off a remarkable comeback victory.
Crowley hoped that kind of game would mean that his team was set to start getting a more consistent output from his bench on a regular basis. Unfortunately, that production did not follow the Bonnies to Dayton.
The Flyers won the bench points category 15-11, a stark contrast in points to what Bona got against La Salle. This meant that more pressure was added onto the starters, and all-in-all, they handled it well. Drake’s 29 points came on 12-for-20 shooting while she added four rebounds and three steals to her stat line. In support, Aaliyah Parker tallied 17 points, five rebounds and four steals and Mackenzie Pettinelli scored seven points, dished four assists and grabbed three steals.
“I’m really proud of our effort,” Crowley said. “There was a lot of man (defense) tonight, but we played really hard and gave ourselves a lot of chances. We needed to rebound a little bit better in the second half, but we kept on fighting and we were right there. There’s certainly a lot to build off.”
Dayton was led by the trio of Olivia Leung, Nicole Stephens and Molly O’Riordan, who scored 20, 19 and 10 points respectively. O’Riordan grabbed 10 rebounds to finish with a double-double while Nayo Lear came just shy of one with nine points and nine rebounds.
St. Bonaventure will look to pick up a big win in its next game, on the road against Loyola Chicago on Jan. 31 at 3 p.m.
