WORCESTER, Mass. – The University of New Haven women’s basketball team hung tough with third-seeded Assumption for 30 minutes in Sunday’s NE-10 Quarterfinal at Worcester, but the Greyhounds pulled away from the sixth-seeded Chargers to claim an 80-66 decision.
Anh-Dao Tran (Webster, Mass./Holy Name) scored a team-high 18 points for New Haven (14-13), which completed its first winning season since 2007-08. The Chargers’ 13 Northeast-10 wins and sixth-place NE-10 finish in the regular season were also the program’s best since joining the conference beginning in the 2008-09 campaign.
Tran knocked down three three-pointers, joining Becky Snow ’00 as the only student-athlete in program history to sink 50 or more treys in a season. Tran’s 52 from distance this winter are fifth all-time behind each of Snow’s four seasons at New Haven. Her 130 career treys through three seasons at UNH rank third all-time behind Snow (234) and Briiana Rende ’09 (140).
Tran also dished out four assists, become the 10th Charger to top 300 helpers (303) in a career.
Bria Moore (West Haven, Conn./Hill Regional Career) added 13 points and seven rebounds for the Chargers, while Aquillin Hayes (Harlem, N.Y./Wings Academy) finished with 11 points and eight boards. Nikita Reddy (Germantown, Md./Germantown) shot 3-for-3 from three-point range in her collegiate finale en route to 10 points off the bench.
The Chargers jumped out to a 14-11 lead, sparked by seven early tallies from Tran. However, Assumption would put together the game’s first extended run, netting the next nine points to claim a 20-14 advantage midway through the period. New Haven rallied back as a seven-point spurt from Reddy, including two three-pointers, spotted the Chargers a 30-29 lead that they would maintain into the intermission. Hebert followed with New Haven’s fifth triple of the half, and Moore converted an old-fashioned three-point play in the closing seconds to send the Chargers into the locker room with a 36-33 lead.
New Haven maintained its lead after the break to a 40-38 count with 18:02 to go, but the Greyhounds answered with a three-pointer to claim a 41-40 lead that they would not relinquish. Though the Chargers trailed by only eight, 63-55, with 7:28 remaining, Assumption went on a 17-6 run to pull away with just 90 seconds to go. Hayes added two late free throws and Reddy drained the final three-point attempt of her Charger career to round out the final at 80-66 in favor of the Greyhounds.
Gabrielle Gibson led all players with 21 points for Assumption (21-6). The Greyhounds will host 10th-seeded Merrimack in an NE-10 Semifinal on Thursday.
