New York, NY – In front of the Homecoming crowd, the women's basketball team put on show as they dominated the Bearcats of Baruch from the get-go. The Hawks scored the first bucket and never looked back as they had scoring contributions from 10 different players and came out on top by a score of 89-67. With the win, Hunter gets back to .500 at 4-4 while Baruch slips to 1-5 overall.
Theresa Leung led all scorers with a season and game high 25 points on 10-12 shooting from the field which included a perfect 5-5 from behind the arc.
Jade Aponte,
Janine Conway and
Marlena Budna all registered in the double digits. Budna also tied her career high by grabbing a game high 14 rebounds. Overall, the Hawks shot 41.9 percent from the field and went 10-18 from behind the arc while winning the rebound battle, 52-34.
The Purple and Gold came out hot to start the game, opening on a 12-3 run in the first 3:55 of the game. During that span, Leung accounted for 10 of her team's 12 points by going 4-4 from the field and sinking two triples. In the quarter, Hunter shot just shy of 43 percent from the field and out-rebounded the Bearcats by five as they established an eight-point lead heading into the second at 21-13.
In the second, a triple from Baruch's Natalie Ibelhaupt made it a four-point game, but the Hawks responded with a vicious 17-2 run in which they sank 6-8 from the field, including going 2-3 from behind the arc and had scoring contributions from five different players. Capping the run was a bucket from Budna to set the scoreboard at 40-21 in favor of the home team. Baruch ended the first half with six unanswered points but still heading into the locker room down 40-28.
A 34-point third quarter put the game out of reach as the Hawks went off, hitting on 10-22 from the field including drilling 5-7 from three-point land. Leung injected an offensive spurt as she did in the first and accounted for 11 points in the opening 4:22 with three from downtown and a lay in. Before the buzzer sounded,
Edina Music grabbed an offensive board and made good on the put back, giving her team a 74-45 advantage heading into the final quarter.
Managing the final quarter, the gap proved too large to overcome as Baruch would get no closer than within 23 points. Six different Hunter players scored at least one point in the quarter and as the time wound down, Aponte put the icing on the cake with Hunter's final points as they went on to win, 89-67.
The Hawks return to action on Tuesday, December 11 when they take on NYU at 5pm. The game will be played at the Hunter Sportsplex.
