Despite a valiant effort, the Lady Bison were defeated by the Long Island University (LIU) Blackbirds in a heartbreaking home loss in Burr Gymnasium on Saturday.
LIU’s Connie James sank the go-ahead lay-up to put the Blackbirds up 67-66 with 1:03 left in the game. The Lady Bison would never recover and eventually fell 71-66.
The score was close throughout the contest and neither team held a double-digit lead at any point in the game.
“They played a close game down to the last couple of seconds,” said Jessica Williams, a junior marketing major.
The Blackbirds of LIU jumped out to an early 26-19 lead with seven minutes left in the first half. The Bison battled back with a lay-up from Saadia Doyle and a three-point basket made by Cheyenne Curley-Payne.
The Lady Bison kept fighting and stepped up their defensive pressure. By halftime, they were faced with only a 30-33 deficit.
Howard came out strong in the second half and gained a 39-37 lead after consecutive jumpers from Zykia Brown and Tamoria Holmes and back-to-back baskets from Doyle.
“It was exciting,” Williams said. “I can see the improvement from last year.”
After the rally, it looked as if the Lady Bison had wrestled control of the game from the Blackbirds, but they could never open up more than a nine-point lead on the Blackbirds.
With five minutes left in the game, the Howard lead was trimmed to five after a three-pointer by LIU’s Heidi Mothershead and a jumper from Chelsi Johnson.
Those two plays, along with a block from Mothershead, would set the stage for a LIU comeback.
Brown would push the Howard lead to three on a lay-up with 1:31 left on the game clock.
Unfortunately, that would be the last point the Lady Bison would score. Three subsequent Blackbird lay-ups forced the Lady Bison into a hole they could not escape.
A missed three-pointer by Brown with eight seconds left would seal the Bison’s fate.
“I thought it was going to go in,” said Craig Ramsey, a freshman English major.
“The way the game was going, I thought it would go into overtime.”
Brown was excellent for the Lady Bison, scoring a game-high 20 points and going 7-for-15 from the field.
Tamoria Holmes was another contributor scoring 14 points and handing out two assists.
Doyle had another strong game on Saturday. She scored 17 points and grabbed 13 rebounds en route to her second double-double in just three games this season.
James led the Blackbirds in scoring with 19 points and Mothershead added eight.
“It was a tough loss, but you can see the team has a lot of talent and potential,” Ramsey said. “They will win one soon.”
With the loss, the Lady Bison fall to 0-3 this season. They look to earn their first victory of the year on Wednesday at 3 p.m., when they face off with Jacksonville at Burr Gymnasium before facing University of Maryland at College Park on Nov. 27.
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