The Falcon women’s basketball team took on The Valparaiso Crusaders on Tuesday night at the Stroh Center. The Falcon’s picked up a thunderous home victory over the Crusaders by a score of 90-77 improving their record to 6-1.
The Falcons were led by junior guard Carly Santoro once again when she put in yet another thrilling performance Tuesday Night. 23 of Santoro’s 29 total points came in the 3rd and 4th quarters. Those 29 points came in the form 8-of-11 shooting from the field and an impressive 13-of-16 shooting from the free-throw line. She also added 13 rebounds and 6 assists to the stat-sheet picking up her 6th double-double in just 7 games. Junior guard Sydney Lambert also came up with 17 points on 6-of-11 shooting with 5 of those 6 buckets being three-pointers.
The Valparaiso Crusaders got contributions from Dani Franklin in the form of 17 points and from guard Nicole Konieczny with 13 points. Those performances just did not appear to be enough to knock off the Falcons at home in front of one of the loudest crowds the Stroh Center has seen this year.
It wasn’t a smooth flight for these Falcons though. In the very first five minutes, the team was staring down a 7-0 deficit and it was beginning to look bleak. That is until Falcons head coach Roos called a timeout.
“I told the team (during the timeout) that this is exactly the way this team opened up against Miami,” Roos said. “Valparaiso was much louder than us during warmups and I knew we would be a little tired to start considering we’ve had three games in five days. I told them, hey I feel really confident because I can recognize when we may come out a little slow. And I hope you feel just as confident in me knowing what I’m going to say next. I told them that we don’t have a seven-point play. You get two consecutive scores and two consecutive stops and then its seven to six and we’ll be fine. They bought into that idea. I wasn’t disappointed with our start to the game, shots just didn’t go in. I knew we would be able to step up following that timeout.”
The team truly did step up following the timeout. The Falcons did something quite uncharacteristic for this year’s team. They had an exceptional third quarter. BGSU opened up the third with a 14-4 run which brought them to a 53-34 lead with 5:40 remaining in the period.
“I wrote on the board, we’re playing two fourth-quarters…. period,” Roos said. “I was trying to get the scorer’s table to put four up there instead of three. I mean we have to look at the third quarter differently. It was nice to see that our second and third quarters were really strong compared to previously.”
This offensive push in the third helped them coast their way to victory and pick up their sixth win already this year. Having six wins this early on in the season is eye-opening due to the fact that the 2016 squad could only gather eight wins in total by the end of the year.
The team gets to enjoy some well-deserved rest and will see action next on Wednesday night. The Falcons are set to face a tough challenge against Big East opponent Xavier Musketeers at home. The team looks to continue their early season success in what looks to be a competitive contest.
