Women’s basketball suffered a heart-wrenching, 59-66 loss to Davidson Wednesday in their last home game of the regular season.
The loss throws the Colonials’ standing in the A-10 into a state of flux, with multiple teams vying for a top-four seeding and a double bye in the upcoming A-10 tournament. Graduate student guard Mia Lakstigala finished with a double-double, leading the Colonials with 23 points and 10 rebounds, and freshman guard Nya Robertson contributed 20 points off the bench but was ice-cold all night, shooting a frigid 5-23 from the field on the night.
“I thought we got caught early on in the game just trying to play at more of a frantic pace,” Head Coach Caroline McCombs said. “And we needed to play at our pace and be disciplined to do the things that we work on every day.”
GW got out to a sluggish start, hitting just two of their first seven 3-point tries. With the 3s not dropping, the Colonials looked elsewhere for an offensive spark, and found it in senior guard Nya Lok and Lakstigala. The pair combined to score 17 of GW’s 19 first quarter points, in addition to Lakstigala pulling down three boards.
As the second quarter got underway, the game quickly turned into a back-and-forth affair, with the Colonials clinging to a lead but failing to break away at any point. Robertson, unable to get anything going from beyond the arc, attacked the basket with reckless abandon, hitting a layup in the first minute of the quarter and sinking two free throws earned from a hard Wildcat foul to put GW up 31-26 with 1:40 to go in the half.
And then, with 40 seconds to go in the half, she hit her first 3 of the game from the top of the key, in what felt like slump-breaking fashion.
However, questionable shot selection coupled with an inability to keep Davidson off the glass would cost GW their already-tenuous lead and ultimately the game in the second half. The Colonials would shoot a putrid 18 percent from the field in the third quarter while going 0-7 from 3-point range. And it would be Davidson who entered the final quarter of play with a 46-45 lead.
“I don’t think we played as well – as a team – as we needed to play,” said McCombs. “We’ve talked about, the last few games, this is our roster and this is what we have and we have to get better at continuing to play together.”
The fourth quarter would be more of the same for GW, with the Wildcats out-scoring them 20-14 in the period thanks in part to the Colonials going 5-14 from the field and 1-5 from 3.
The loss has knocked the Colonials – once sole possessors of third-place in the A-10 – back into what is now a three-way tie for third and a multiteam battle for a top-four seed and a double bye in the upcoming A-10 tournament.
“It’s all about us,” Lakstigala said. “No matter who we play, we just want to play our hardest. Every game is so important. We’re just going to give it our all like we do every single game”
The Colonials will travel to Massachusetts Saturday to face first-in-the-A-10 UMass in their final regular season game. Tipoff is at 4 p.m.
