AMHERST — On the verge of its second consecutive loss after starting the season with 11 straight wins, the Amherst College women’s basketball team was struggling offensively in the second half of Monday afternoon’s matchup with Rowan University.
The Mammoths surrendered a 16-0 run, buoyed by the Prophs’ Kate Herlihy (16 points, seven rebounds, four assists, three steals), spanning across the end of the second and beginning of the third quarters. The spurt saw Amherst’s lead slip from up 10 points to down six (37-31), and warranted a timeout from Mammoths head coach GP Gromacki.
In the huddle, sophomore guard Laura Mendell had a message for her team: she wasn’t going to let them lose.
Mendell erupted out of the timeout, and scored 20 of her 22 points in the second half – including the go-ahead 3-pointer with 53 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter – to lead Amherst to a 70-64 win at LeFrak Gymnasium.
“She really put the team on her back,” Gromacki said of Mendell. “She said it herself in a timeout, ‘We’re not gonna lose this game today.’ And she inspired everyone else and they kind of followed her lead late in the game.”
A 9-0 run helped Amherst build its 10-point lead in the second quarter, fueled by the paint dominance of junior forward Maya Cwalina – who started her first game of the season on Monday. Cwalina (17 points, four rebounds) surpassed her season-high of 12 points in one half, heading into the break with 15 thanks to a stretch of seven straight points.
Amherst’s two leading scorers, Kori Barach and Reeya Patel, struggled offensively. Barach shot 3-for-13 (1-for-6 from 3, the one make being a clutch shot from the corner in the fourth quarter) and Patel (team-high five assists) shot 0-for-7. Barach tallied nine points, 10 rebounds, five steals, and four assists while playing all 40 minutes. Anna Tranum scored nine points and grabbed eight rebounds as well.
Each Amherst player had moments where they impacted the game in other ways than scoring, and that’s exactly what Gromacki has preached in practice to his group.
“When we went up in the second quarter by 10, we should’ve pulled away and at least kept that lead, but they cut it to one,” Gromacki said. “Then we came out flat in the second half and they took the lead on us. But give our team a lot of credit, people made big plays. Maya carried us in the first half, then Laura took over the second half for us. We stress team basketball every day, and everyone’s had their moments.”
Amherst went 0-for-9 from 3-point range in the first half, and missed its first three attempts in the second before Mendell splashed one home with six minutes to go in the third frame.
Despite the poor shooting, the Mammoths coaching staff encouraged their team to keep letting the long ball fly, because eventually it would go down – and go down it did.
“They just continued to step up with confidence, we never told them not to shoot,” Gromacki said. “They know if they get a good shot, we want them to take it. Laura wasn’t afraid to take it, Kori hit one down the stretch. Those were big shots at the right time.”
The momentum-swinging runs that Rowan (6-8, 3-4 NJAC) went on had more to do with what Amherst wasn’t doing defensively than it did what the Prophs ran on offense. The Mammoths found themselves out of position on several occasions, specifically when Herlihy and either of Rowan’s two forwards (Eliana Santana or Charlotte Carlies, who scored nine points apiece) emptied out one side of the floor to run the pick-and-roll.
Herlihy created an open shot for somebody on the floor nearly every possession.
Gromacki pointed to that end of the floor as the Mammoths’ weak spot. And as NESCAC play kicks into gear, defense has to be the part of the game Amherst relies on most – as that’s what can be relied upon night in and night out, not the offensive end (take Monday’s 17 percent 3-point shooting clip for example).
“We can’t relax like we did today. Every play means something, we gotta fight tooth and nail,” Gromacki said. “Everybody has to dig in defensively.”
Although the 16-year head coach wasn’t thrilled with the majority of the game, he was happy to see the Mammoths gut out a scrappy victory when they didn’t have their best stuff.
On the backs of Mendell and Cwalina, Amherst bounced back from Saturday’s 76-67 loss against Middlebury — its first defeat of the 2023-24 campaign.
“I’m hoping that a game like this, where you come out the way we played for over half the game, you see what can happen to you,” Gromacki said. “Then on the flip side, you’re able to come back when things aren’t looking good, so we know what we’re capable of.”
Amherst (12-1, 1-1 NESCAC) travels to conference foe Tufts on Friday with tip-off scheduled for 7 p.m.
