Rylee Pireu and Maggie Coe each hit five 3-pointers and scored 21 points, and the Mount Vernon Nazarene University women's basket ball team cruised to an 89-54 victory at Kenyon College on Wednesday, Nov. 17.
The Mount Vernon Nazarene University women’s basketball team (5-2, 0-0), No. 23 in the NAIA Coaches' Poll, led 27-12 after the first quarter and never looked back. Kenyon College scored the opening points of the game, but it was all MVNU after that.
MVNU was able to play its entire bench as everyone dressed for the Lady Cougars and played 14 or more minutes.
Kenyon’s Katie Orefice started the night off by hitting the game’s first jump shot 30 seconds in. The Ladies held on to their two-point lead until the Cougars hit a three-pointer to take the lead. Mount Vernon Nazarene remained in the lead for the remainder of the game and the Cougars used the second quarter to extend their lead as they shot 50% from three-point range. In the period, Kenyon’s Grace Connery scored eight of the Ladies’ 16 points in the quarter, but Mount Vernon Nazarene stretched the lead to 50-28 after Lady Cougar junior Erin Boehm made a 3-point shot with under a minute to play in the quarter.
Coming out of the break, the Cougars continued to shoot the ball well. Coe scored 10 of her co-game-high 21 in the third quarter. Mount Vernon Nazarene used a 13-point run to stretch the lead to 36 points, and after three quarters of play, the Cougars led the Ladies 71-36.
The Ladies started to find the offense in the fourth quarter. After an 8-0 Cougars run, the Ladies rattled off a 15-5 run of their own. During the run, Madelyn Anderson, Connery and Orefice all hit three-point shots. Kenyon’s Greta Propp added in a bucket of her own during the streak, and Katie Sprang made two free throws with less than a minute to go to arrive at the final score, 89-54.
For MVNU, Pireu finished with 21 points on 8-for-14 shooting. She was 5-for-8 from three.
Coe finished with 21 points as well for MVNU. Coe shot 8-for-15 from the field and was 5-for-8 from three. Maggie Coblentz finished with 12 points, six rebounds, three assists and two steals. Elizabeth Monk had 10 points on 5-for-6 shooting. Emily Walker distributed at a high level, finishing with a career-high 10 assists. She also grabbed five rebounds.
“It was a great team effort," MVNU coach Amanda Short said. "A lot of good things to build off of as we go into conference play.”
