Youth and Balance Guides Spiders to Season Opening Win at Fairfield, 72-67

Friday, November 10

Bridgeport, CT

7:00 PM

University of Richmond

1-0

Fairfield

0-1

Richmond

Fairfield

Youth and Balance Guides Spiders to Season Opening Win at Fairfield, 72-67

11/10/2017 | Women's Basketball

Box Score

By: Matt Moretti III (@Moretts13)

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. – The University of Richmond women's basketball team (1-0) leaned on the offensive prowess of its youth during Friday night's season opening win over Fairfield (0-1) by getting 26 combined points from its freshmen to claim the 72-67 victory.

Fresh faces Kailyn Fee and Alex Parson put on a show in the early going then sustained the pace throughout to post a memorable debut performance. Fee made her first start and led the Spiders in scoring by dropping in 16 points on the strength of 4-5 shooting from long range while Parson added 10 on 4-9 from the floor and 2-3 from deep. Micaela Parson was the only other Spider to reach double-figures with 12.

Amy Duggan also made the first start of her career and she contributed four points and a career-high tying eight rebounds in 26 minutes of action. Ten Spiders found minutes on Friday night and nine of them scored. Dee Hatcher and Kylie Murphree each added seven, Alicia Hudalla and Karleigh Wike tossed in six, and Jaide Hinds-Clarke had four.

The pace was frenetic to start. Fairfield buried a triple on its first possession but Fee had something to say about that as she went on to can the first two shots of her Spider career, both from long range to quickly give her team a 6-5 lead. Fellow freshman Alex Parson checked in a few minutes later and followed suit, knocking down the first shot of her career, also a three ball to push the Spider lead to 13-7. Fairfield closed the first quarter strong though to take a 23-22 lead.

Richmond fell behind by as many as nine, 33-24, with 6:47 left in the second quarter and was struggling to find the bottom of the bucket. The Parson sisters forced capitalized on Fairfield turnovers the next two possessions. Alex netted another triple in transition and Micaela went coast-to-coast for an easy lay-in to cut the deficit to four by the time the media timeout came at 4:54.

The Spiders went on to force nine turnovers in the second quarter and closed the half on an extended 12-4 run to take a 36-35 lead into the locker room. The rookie duo of Fee (11 points) and Alex Parson (8 points) combined for 19 to pace the offense in the first half.

The third quarter was a back-and-forth affair. Micaela Parson got the scoring started with a layup but both sides traded baskets for a while and the media timeout arrived at the 4:57 mark with the Spiders leading, 46-44.

Fairfield cut a Richmond four-point lead to just two at the 3:33 mark but back-to-back makes from Alicia Hudalla and Micaela in transition off a Duggan steal made it a six-point game. More back-and-forth ensued until the third quarter buzzer rang out, leaving the Spiders in the lead, 56-53.

Richmond began the fourth quarter with an 8-2 run that created its largest lead of the game, 64-55, with eight minutes to play. Fairfield answered with a 7-0 run of its own to get it back down to two but the Richmond defense simply would not break.

Hatcher canned a jumper at 4:53 to make it a four-point game but Fairfield knotted the game at 66 with 3:53 to go. The Spiders responded immediately with a 5-0 run, capped off by a cold-blooded step-back jumper by Alex Parson at the 25-second mark to effectively seal this one. Fairfield had no answer and the Spiders locked up the 72-67 victory.

The team will stay out on the road and travel from Bridgeport down to Columbia for a date with the Lions on Sunday at 2 p.m. The Spiders will be looking to avenge a season-opening loss to the Lions in the Robins Center last season.