Washington, PA - Much of the deck was stacked against the Geneva College women′s basketball team on Wednesday night as it opened PAC play against 25th ranked Washington & Jefferson. Not only were the Golden Tornadoes going up against the pre-season favorite and nationally ranked President′s, but they were going into hostile territory without one of their main post weapons in Alyse Scarsella. Without one of its starters in the line-up and a young team on the floor, Geneva dropped a 72-55 decision to the President′s to drop to 2-4 on the season including three consecutive losses.
After the first few minutes of the game, it appeared Geneva may be run completely out of the gym after being outscored 15-1 in the first six minutes. In fact, the Golden Tornadoes fell behind by as many as 21 points in the first half and went to the locker room trailing 40-21. "We put ourselves in a major hole early and as well as we played in the second half we were just unable to fully recover," said head coach Renee Drake.
Drake′s team did respond in the second half and rallied to cut W & J′s lead to ten points at 62-52 with five minutes remaining in the game. The Golden Tornadoes were not able to complete the comeback against a very strong W & J team and were never able to get the deficit into single digits."They are pre-season favorites for a reason," said Drake. "They are a very complete basketball team and show very little in terms of major weaknesses."
The Golden Tornadoes did not shoot the ball particularly well with a mark of 32% from the field for the game, including a 5-22 effort from three-point range. One of the bright spots came from the play of junior Val Hamilton. Hamilton led all scorers with 20 points on 8-13 shooting and a team best eight rebounds in the loss. Renee Rawding chipped in with nine points and five rebounds for the Golden Tornadoes.
Geneva returns home on Saturday afternoon at 1 pm to host the Tomcats from Thiel College.
Geneva College is a comprehensive Christian college of the arts, sciences and professional studies. Founded in the tradition of the Reformed Christian faith, Geneva prepares students to serve Christ in all areas of society: work, family and the church. Geneva College′s philosophy of education is based on the Foundational Concepts of Christian Higher Education. Geneva is a founding member of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU).
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