AMHERST — With just over five minutes to go, Hannah Fox and Maeve McNamara collided out of bounds attempting to make a play in help defense.
The play wasn’t consequential to the Amherst College women’s basketball team’s 68-39 victory over Maine Maritime, but it highlighted the competitive nature of Fox and the defense.
McNamara’s head hit Fox’s chin causing her mouth to start bleeding. Fox didn’t want to be taken out of the game, however, in an effort to keep making a difference for the team on both ends.
“I wear a mouth guard, but I guess it caught my bottom teeth and my mouth was just filled with blood,” Fox said. “Once it got on my jersey the ref noticed it and I had to go take care of it.”
The play was one of several hustle plays that Fox made throughout the game; at one point jumping over her bench to try to save a ball, and even rolling over in a summersault fashion trying to keep a ball in play in the second half. The hustle that Fox showed was the catalyst for her team-high five steals, as Amherst held a 15-1 advantage in that category.
“We knew that we really had to get a flow going and it starts on defense,” Fox said. “If we get a steal and a nice easy transition basket it just gets the momentum going. We started from the beginning with a couple steals, a couple rebounds, and it just got us going.”
Amherst coach G.P. Gromacki emphasized that this is the defense that Amherst is capable of playing and that he’s glad they are playing up to their potential after a slow start to the season.
“We’ve been focusing on defense. It’s the mainstay of our program and we feel we haven’t played up to our standards,” Gromacki said. “The past couple games we’ve really kind of stepped our game up and we’ve got five people out there playing hard, it’s not just one person and that’s the difference.”
The game was close early as Amherst tried to settle into its defensive game plan and get its offense going. Once it did, Madeline Eck put together 12 first-quarter points on 5-for-7 shooting, sparking a 12-0 Amherst run late in the quarter. Eck finished with 19 to lead the Mammoths.
One of the keys for Amherst was slowing down Maine Maritime forward Alayne Felix, who is a dominant post presence. Although Felix scored 17 in the game, she was slowed down for extended periods by the Amherst defense.
“She’s a very good player with a lot of moves down there,” Gromacki said. “I thought overall we did a pretty nice job making her earn her points and that was a big difference in the game.”
Even when the game was well in hand and some of Amherst’s younger players checked into the game the defense didn’t miss a beat. The Mammoths held Mariners scoreless for the final 3:12.
“Our whole team was excited about that,” Gromacki said. “They play defense just like the group that played the first 30 plus minutes.”
Fox had 13 points, four rebounds and four assists, while Cam Hendricks added 10 for Amherst.