The women’s basketball team used its height advantage to dominate William Smith College en route to a 78–64 win in the Bombers’ season opening game at Ben Light Gymnasium Tuesday.
The Blue and Gold were led in scoring by senior forward Elissa Klie who scored 14 points on 6–10 shooting from the field. Also chipping in for the Bombers were senior guard/forward Jordan Confessore with 12 points, sophomore forward Devin Shea with 10 and 11 rebounds and freshman guard Kathryn Campbell with 10 points.
Seven other players also made it into the game for the Bombers, all of whom contributed to the final score.
Confessore said the Bombers are able to get a lot of people involved through the team’s ball movement and because the Blue and Gold have a lot of skill, it’s easier for players to score when given the opportunity.
“We work really well together especially on offense,” Confessore said. “We have a lot of girls that can just play to be quite honest. There are a lot of girls with a lot of skill and by getting different people open at different times it’s a good thing to have. We’re going to be a threat and that’s going to be a strength for us in the future.”
The Blue and Gold shot 49.3 percent from the field in the game while limiting the Herons to just 30.3 percent shooting.
Shea said the Bombers offense started to pick up when the team started playing better defense in the first half.
“When we picked up our defense our offense picked up,” Shea said. It kind of all branched out from good defense. Our post defense was pretty good today.”
The Blue and Gold thrived down low with Klie and Shea combining to shoot 11–21 from the field. Klie said good ball movement was key for the Bombers to take advantage of the team’s height advantage inside.
“It all starts with good passing inside,” Klie said. “We try to move the ball in and out and work our high-low game.”
Confessore said despite the early win, there are some things the Bombers need to work on.
“We did a lot of good things with it being the first game,” Confessore said. “We need to work on rebounding a little bit and our transition defense wasn’t as good as we would like it to be but we pulled out the win. A bunch of the girls just stepped up and we were winning by 20 at one point so we were obviously doing something right.”
The Blue and Gold’s next game will be at 6 p.m. Friday on the road against the University of Rochester in the first round of the Chuck Resler Invitational.
