Lady Cavs struggle for No. 5

SHANE EVANS WEB EDITOR SME722@CABRINI EDU

Closing out the season was one of the main goals of the girl’s basketball team. Unfortunately, that may not be the case.

Having lost their last two games against conference rivals Arcadia and Gwynedd-Mercy, respectively, the Lady Cavs are heading in the wrong direction at the absolute wrong time.

Leading scorer freshman Nikki Duggan described the Cavs’play against Arcadia as “very uncharacteristic.” The game saw Cabrini let a 10-point second half lead slip away, losing the game by seven, 52-45.

“We couldn’t make a shot,” Duggan said. “Even the little things just seemed to go their way. We would go for a rebound, and three of our girls would tip it and get a hand on it, but it would fall into the arms of the other team. Because our offense wasn’t there, our defense started to fall apart and they got easy shots which led to them taking over the game,” Duggan said.

Senior forward Jen Shursky, sophomore forward Sam Hartling and freshman forward Rachel Caron led the scoring attack with 10 points each, more than twothirds of the team’stotal points.

The allowance for sub-par play is always slim at this level, but when your next game is against PAC leading GwyneddMercy, you need to play a near perfect game, and Cabrini wasn’t quite there.

The Lady Cavs played an energetic first half against the 203 Gwynedd-Mercy squad and went into the locker room only down by four points.

As the second half began, Cabrini kept the lead to 10 with under 13 minutes remaining, but the Griffins pushed ahead with a 17-4 run in the final six minutes to put the game out of reach.

Despite the loss, the Lady Cavs are still guaranteed a playoff birth, which could be as high as the No. 2 seed, following Gwynedd.

With two games remaining in the regular season, the Cavaliers can drop as low as the last spot, No. 6 or up to No. 2. Currently in the fourth position, Cabrini is lined up to play either Neumann of Misericordia, who will hold the No. 5 spot.

If Cabrini manages to beat across-the-street rival Eastern on Monday night, it assures the Lady Cavs a home game on Feb. 21.

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