The AU Women's Basketball team had trouble generating offense at times without injured junior point guard Tala Hada, who hasn't played since an early-season ligament tear.
But never did the Eagles struggle at a more inopportune time than on Saturday afternoon, when Navy held AU scoreless for the last 8:41 en route to a 49-46 win in Annapolis, Md.
A win would have secured a third-place Patriot League finish for the Eagles, and a shorter trip for the first and second rounds of the Patriot League tournament, to Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa. A No. 3 seed seemed impossible four games ago, before the Eagles won three-straight home games.
But now some of that work has gone wasted, as the Eagles (12-15, 7-7 PL) earn just a No. 4 seed, and will have to face Navy (10-17, 6-8 PL) again on Thursday at No. 1 seed Holy Cross.
The Eagles built their second-half lead quickly after a halftime break that saw the two teams tied at 28. Four players scored in a 9-2 run that put AU ahead 37-32 with 15:20 left.
AU led for a 17:31 stretch of the second half. But Navy pummeled away at AU's lead late, and closed the game with a 10-0 run in which the Mids shot 6-8 from the foul line and converted two lay-ups for their other points of the spurt.
Senior guards Damarah Rhymer and Joanna Barnes scored 11 and 10 points respectively to lead the Eagles in what was for both teams an ugly offensive game.
The Eagles shot 44 percent from the floor to Navy's 35. They also took care of the ball, if only temporarily, turning it over 20 times to Navy's 26. To say AU's defense was active would be an understatement, as the Eagles snagged 19 steals. Senior forward Chanel Hunt swiped six steals, while Barnes took five. During Navy's game winning run, the Mids still turned the ball over seven times.
But the Mids beat the Eagles on the foul line, going 11-13 while AU went 3-7, and on the boards, out-rebounding the Eagles 34-25. And in the end, the Mids beat the Eagles in producing down the stretch.
Forward Nikki Curtis was the only Mid in double figures, scoring 16 points while shooting 50 percent from the floor and going a perfect 4-4 from the line.
The teams played an uncharacteristically clean game for its magnitude, with the two sides combining for only 18 fouls. Several of those fouls were charged to AU in the game's final seconds, when it needed fouls to get
into the bonus and force the Mids to the
foul line.
