Drexel University Athletics
Drexel University
Mount St. Mary's (Md.)
Dragons Level The Mount, 81-51, For Fourth Straight Win
1/3/2008 9:23:01 PM | Women's Basketball
Philadelphia - Drexel showed no signs of cooling off after its best shooting performance of the season against American on New Year's Eve. The Dragons opened up their offense, shooting 58.5 percent from the floor, in an 81-51 trouncing of Mount St. Mary's (3-10) to close out non-conference play. Gabriela Marginean led all scorers with 17 points. She shot 3-for-4 from deep and was one of seven Dragons (5-6) who participated a three-point downpour that saw the team shower the Mountaineers with 14 triples before the final buzzer sound on their fourth straight victory.
After a sluggish start, Drexel's first basket was appropriately a three-pointer, that kissed off the glass from the baseline shot of Nicole Hester (Waldorf, Md.). The resurgent junior forward finished 3-for-4 from deep for a second straight game and finished with 12 points. Freshman guard Jasmina Rosseel came off the bench after missing the team's last game to score 13 points and match the best three-point shooting performance of her young career by going 3-for-5 from distance.
The Dragons' first nine field goals of the second half were three-pointers, as the team victimized a lackluster Mount St. Mary's zone defense. Alison Lupariello's lone trey of the game at the 9:05 mark gave Drexel its largest lead of the game, 42 points, 71-29. The Mountaineers pressure defense ended up being the solution they were looking for against the Dragons' offense, but even a 12-0 run over the next four minutes would be too little, too late to pull the team back into the game. Drexel did not put a two-pointer through the basket in the second period until the 5:15 mark when Jennifer Stjarnstrom hit a driving layup to make the score 75-41.
Stjarnstrom would also knock down the team's 14th three-pointer of the game, her first of the season, to bring a game full circle with the Dragons' final points of the night. Drexel shot better than 58 percent in both halves, wrapping up the contest with a season-high 58.5 percent shooting display and only a slightly less efficient 58.3 percent rate behind the arc.
Not to be lost in offensive performance in the game, was the team's solid defense. The Dragons held Mount St. Mary's to 32.6 percent shooting from the floor and swatted away a season-high eight blocks led by Brook Cornish's career-high-tying four stuffs. The Mount made just five field goals in the first half, as Drexel limited them to 15 points on 20.8 percent shooting, the lowest first-half point total by a Drexel opponent this season. Marginean poked away a season-high four steals. None was more poignant than a determined effort at the end of the first half that saw her leap to deflect a pass at mid court then out-jump two Mountaineers twice to retrieve the ball and feed Lupariello for a layup with eight seconds in the period.
Drexel built its lead with a 13-0 run early in the first half and closed out the period with a 12-3 spurt that made it 39-15 at halftime. All 11 active players on the roster saw time in the first half and by the end of the game 10 of them had recorded at least one assist, in the team's season-high output of 25 helpers.
The 30-point win was Drexel's largest margin of victory since Feb. 17, 2006, when the Dragons beat Northeastern 81-51 and set a single-game team record with 18 three-pointers in the win. Drexel has won its last two contests by a combined 53 points. The last time the Dragons scored 75 points or more in consecutive games was during the 2003-04 season.
The team enters CAA play on Sunday, looking to extend its winning streak to five games, which would match its longest string of wins since 2004-05. Tip time for the team's tilt with Hofstra is set for 1:00 p.m. at the DAC.
