Sanchez, Crilley leads Rowan past TCNJ

By Anthony Caruso III | Publisher

EWING — The College of New Jersey’s women’s basketball team fell to the Rowan Profs, 65-58, at a Packer Hall on Wednesday night.

“We had a great effort [last night],” head coach Dawn Henderson said. “I think we played a really good team.We stopped their pressure for 30 of the 40 minutes. Those 10 minutes hurt us but I liked our mental toughness. I liked a lot of the things I saw.”

The Lions are now 2-5 on the season while hey are 1-3 within the New Jersey Athletic Conference. The Profs are 7-1 overall and are 3-1 in conference play.

“If we play like we played [last night] we’ll get back on the winning side,” Henderson said. “There’s 50-50 games and there’s games that we should win. We need to take care of business in these games that we should win.”

Rowan is tied for second-place within conference play with the Kean Cougars. Montclair State is perfect with an 8-0 record and 4-0 in the conference.

The Lions had a halftime lead. Then, to begin the second half, the Profs went on a 10-4 run in the third quarter. As the quarter went on, the game was tight and TCNJ had a slight lead.

“We came out a little tentative,” Henderson said. “We crawled back, which was great, but I was a little worried that we weren’t. You can’t give a good team that much of a lead-way.”

In the fourth quarter, with the Profs having a small lead, Rowan went to a press that gave TCNJ problems. They turned the ball over several times.

“That was tough,” Kate O’Leary said. “We had trouble and we lost our focus there.”

The Profs took the lead with under five minutes left in the contest. The Lions were able to get the game close late as they were within two points, but Rowan held onto the lead as the second ticked away.

Rowan was led by Anyssa Sanchez, who had 17 points. Summer Crilley added 15 and April Szymczyk had seven. Fellow starters Valerie Garofalo and Samantha Tello combined for four points.

The Profs had 23 bench points. Alex Raring led the bench players with nine points, while Alexis Kriley added eight and Mandy Jiang had five.

Nikki Schott led the Lions with 15 points, while O’Leary had 13 and Jen Byrne had nine. Starters Kim Dana and Charlotte Schum combined for 12 points.

“I have to thank my teammates,” O’Leary said. “They were giving me good shots at the basket.”

Cindy Napolitano had nine bench points on three three-pointers.

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