Photo by Luke Zayas/True To The Cru
CLAREMONT, California — Tanya Ghai and Payton Sugar each scored 21 points and combined for nine of Claremont-Mudd-Scripps’ 12 3-pointers as the Athenas upset No. 25 UMHB women’s basketball, 74-45, in The Cru’s road opener on Friday night.
The Cru trailed from the 9:31 mark of the opening quarter until the final buzzer, with CMS widening its lead to as many as 40 points late in the fourth quarter. It marked a dominant win for the hosts inside Roberts Pavillion, as the Athenas—with a starting lineup composed of two graduate students, two seniors, and a junior—pulled away in a game-opening 9-3 run and never looked back.
For UMHB, the 29-point defeat was difficult to swallow, as The Cru went out to the West Coast seeking a bounce-back on the heels of an 0-2 opening weekend at home. Instead, they shot 24.2%, turned it over 18 times, and struggled to keep pace.
But if there’s any recompense in a hard lesson on the road, it’s that the Crusaders have an opportunity to turn the page immediately. Less than 24 hours after walking off the court in Roberts Pavilion, they will be back inside another opposing gym, facing Redlands on Saturday night at 5 p.m. PT (7 p.m. CT). The Bulldogs were picked No. 2 in the SCIAC Preseason Poll and are 1-0 after a 36-point win over Pacific Lutheran in the season opener.
“We are evaluating a lot right now,” UMHB head coach Katie Novak-Lenoir said postgame. “We need to get back to work ethic and caring about the details and competing. I’m disappointed in our competitiveness and we are going to keep working to find combinations that sustain that and keep trying to do a better job of building it in practice.”
CMS opened Friday’s contest with a handful of early buckets, but it was the defensive presence that did the most damage in creating an initial lead. The Athenas, who have now held their first three opponents this season to a combined 3-point shooting percentage of just 14.9% (11-of-74), forced several difficult shots in the opening 10 minutes, with UMHB going just 2-of-15 from the field in that stretch.
That set the tone, but it was the second quarter that held the game’s most decisive sequence. With 6:06 left until halftime, Josie Bruder hit her second 3-point of the quarter, a sign that The Cru had seemingly found its footing and put the shaky offensive start in the rearview mirror. Bruder’s shot from beyond the arc continued a 10-2 spurt that cut a 14-point deficit to just six, 23-17.
But CMS proved it could shoot the 3 too. Sugar, a freshman from Los Angeles who had played a combined 11 minutes in the Athenas’ previous two games, came off the bench with 6:29 until the half. It ended up being the single-most important substitution CMS head coach Chanel Murchison could have made.
Over the next five minutes, Sugar put up a total of six 3-point attempts. All six found their mark. Her first collegiate points—all 18 of them—were the centerpiece of a game-changing 21-2 run that gave CMS a commanding 44-21 halftime lead. UMHB had no answer on the offensive end, shooting just 1-of-8 from the field in the same five-minute period.
The suffocating defense returned in the second half for the Athenas, who outscored The Cru, 18-7, in the 10 minutes coming out of halftime. Sugar’s hot hand from beyond the arc in the second, and the defense limiting UMHB to just two made shots in the third (2-of-16), were together more than enough to put the game away.
Katelen Brooks finished as UMHB’s leading scorer with 10 points off the bench, while freshman Pierce Scheppler added nine points and three rebounds in the first start of her college career. Senior forward Amillion Fowler, who missed The Cru’s home duel with Emory last Sunday, returned to the rotation with five points, six rebounds, and two assists.
