NEWTON, Mass. – On a night in which the Mount Ida College women's basketball team played to support the Kay Yow foundation for Breast Cancer Awareness, freshman Angelique Martinez (Taunton, Mass.) scored 19 points and grabbed 13 rebounds to compile her eighth double-double of the 2013-14 season.
Martinez's efforts were matched by Lasell college sophomore Katie Stopera (Hollis, N.H.), who scored a game-high 23 points to lead the Lasers to a 72-55 win in Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) action on Tuesday night.
Lasell (11-11, 4-4 GNAC) shot 60% in the second half and went 27-34 from the free-throw line in the game to turn a five point halftime lead into a double-digit advantage. After going 0-7 from the three-point line in the first half, Lasell hit 5-7 attempts from downtown after the break, led by Stopera, who was 3-4 from deep in the last twenty minutes.
Senior Abbey Fedigan (New Fairfield, Conn.) scored 14 points for Mount Ida (3-19, 0-8 GNAC), and was one of four Mustangs to hand out a team-high three assists, along with Martinez and junior Jenn Rafuse (Brockton, Mass.), who added 12 points for Mount Ida, which shot 33.3% from the field as a team.
Rafuse was one rebound shy of a double-double of her own, while Lasell got just such a performance from junior Alexis Chappell (Springfield, Mass.), who added 12 points and 11 rebounds for the visitors.
The Mustangs cut the deficit to within a point by scoring six of the first eight points after halftime, but they could never reclaim the lead that they had held for the first thirteen minutes of the game.
Lasell used an 11-3 run late in the second half to claim their largest lead of the game, a 22 point advantage with under three minutes to play. That spurt included three-pointers from Stopera and Molly Lauver (Cambridge, N.Y.), who added 14 points, three assists and three steals in the win.
Mount Ida held the Lasers without a field goal for the first 7:33 of play, opening up a 9-2 lead on a three-pointer by Fedigan. That seven-point advantage would amount to their largest lead of the game.
The visitors fought back, doing much of their work at the foul line, where they were 11-14 in the first half, while the Mustangs did not get to the charity stripe before the break.
The teams went back and forth once Lasell had pulled even, but the Lasers closed out the last five minutes of the half on an 8-2 run to take a five point lead, 27-22 into the locker rooms.
The Mustangs only got to the free-throw line for 13 attempts in the game, hitting 8 of them, and each team pulled down 41 rebounds.
Stopera dished out four assists and had nine rebounds, while Danielle Autencio (Montville, Conn.) added ten points and eight boards for the Lasers.
Mount Ida hits the road again for their next game, a trip to Providence on Saturday to face Johnson & Wales at 1:00 pm.
Lasell will be on a road trip of their own, taking the court in Paxton against Anna Maria at the same time.