Women's Basketball Drops Opener at Penn State, 84-70

Sunday, November 12

University Park, Pa.

1 p.m.

Drexel University

0-1

Penn State

2-0

Drexel

Penn State

Photo by: Greg Carroccio

Women's Basketball Drops Opener at Penn State, 84-70

11/12/2017 3:13:00 PM | Women's Basketball

Box Score

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – The Drexel women's basketball team dropped its opener on the road at Penn State on Sunday afternoon, 84-70. The Dragons mounted an impressive comeback effort in the fourth quarter, but the deficit proved too large to overcome as Drexel fell in its season opener for the first time since the 2011-12 campaign.

Aubree Brown led the way for Drexel with 16 points, establishing a new career high. She added a career-best six assists as well as four rebounds. Eline Maesschalck also set a personal best with 12 points in her first career start. Bailey Greenberg had 11 points and six rebounds, all of her points coming in the second half.

Sara Woods, making her first career start, chipped in eight points and three rebounds despite foul trouble throughout the afternoon. Ana Ferariu added six with four assists in what was also the first start of her Dragons career. Megan Marecic scored six on a pair of three-pointers to go along with three assists, and Mariah Leonard added five points and five rebounds in her Drexel debut. Niki Metzel scored four with six rebounds, while Tereza Kracikova added two points. Kayla Bacon had a rebound in eight minutes in her first collegiate appearance.

Drexel was plagued by foul trouble for most of the first half, with seven players picking up at least two personal fouls in the first 20 minutes of action. After taking an early 5-1 lead, the Dragons saw Penn State rattle off a 12-2 run to grab a 13-7 edge. Drexel responded with five straight from Megan Marecic and Aubree Brown to pull back within one, but the Lady Lions scored the game's next 12 points to pull out to a 25-12 margin at the end of the first quarter.

The Penn State lead great as high as 19 early in the second quarter as they led 34-15 with 7:10 to play in the half. But Drexel slowly chipped away. Brown started it with a three-pointer, followed by a lay-up from Niki Metzel. Metzel would score four points down the stretch in the second quarter as the Dragons at one point slashed the Penn State lead to 10, 41-31. A Lady Lion lay-up in the final minute of play left Penn State up 43-31 at the break. Penn State did most of its damage from the free throw line, where it was 18-for-26 in the first half.

The Dragons' defense stiffened up in the second half, sending the Lady Lions to the free throw line just seven times after intermission. Penn State made up for it with outside shooting, going 8-for-14 from beyond the arc in the second half after a 1-for-8 showing in the first half.

Penn State led by 21 midway through the third quarter, what would prove to be its largest lead of the afternoon. After cutting it to 17 by the start of the fourth, Drexel kept the heat on in the final quarter. A 9-2 Dragons run early in the period was capped by a Bailey Greenberg three-pointer that left Drexel down by 13, 69-56, with 6:00 to play. After a Penn State bucket broke up the run, Brown and Mariah Leonard combined for seven of the game's next eight points to make it a single-digit game for the first time since the first quarter, 72-63, with 4:28 still to play.

Though the Dragons would get the lead back to nine multiple times down the stretch, Penn State always found an answer in the form of a three-pointer to keep Drexel at arm's length. In the end, the Lady Lions became the first team to score 80 on Drexel since Syracuse did it in the Carrier Dome on Dec. 29, 2015.

The Dragons will make their home debut on Thursday night when they host La Salle for an intra-city matchup at 7 p.m. It will be the teams' first meeting since 2012, when the Dragons won 56-53 at La Salle on Nov. 17. The Dragons have played every other Philadelphia-area team more recently, but have won their last three against the Explorers.