WEST HAVEN- New Haven’s defensive pressure was able to clip the wins of the Southern Connecticut State Owls on Saturday with the 73-58 win. The Chargers forced 26 SCSU turnovers and turn them into 32 Charger points. It seemed like everyone on the Chargers wanted to get in on the act with six different players recording at least one steal, led by Yasmin Ithier-Vicenty who tallied four of them.

The action was back an forth through the first five plus minutes of the game with no team really being able to take control until Southern Connecticut pulled a seven point out on the Chargers with 12:17 left in the half at 22-15. Over the next eight minutes New Haven was having difficulties trimming the Owls advantage trailing 35-27 with just over four minutes to go in the opening half. But over the last four minuts the Chargers were able to go on a six nothing run to cut the Owls lead to two at the half 35-33.

New Haven used a balance scoring effort in the half with no player having double figures but Jasmine Hardy had nine, Helin Marte and Ithier-Vicenty each adding six to help the Chargers keep it close. Marte also added five assists but turned ball over the same amount of times. The Owls were led by Allyson Smith, who had 14 points in the first half on 4-7 from the floor including 4-5 from three-point range; also in double figures for Southern Connecticut was Shelley Pierson who added 10 points and pulled down six rebounds.

During halftime coach Jessica Smith and het staff made some great adjustments and helped the Chargers charger out of the gates and take a 13 point lead in the first eight minutes thanks to a 15-0 run to open the second half. Southern Connecticut was unable to recover from the added defensive pressure and hot shooting of the Chargers in the second half. New Haven was able to convert 12 Owl turnovers into 20 points in the half to go along with 59 percent shooting. The chargers were able to open up a 19 point lead, their largest of the game, with just under two minutes to play in the game.

With the win the Chargers improve to 9-8 on Northeast 10 play and get back to .500 at 11-11 on the season. The Owls fall to 8-9 in conference play and fall back to .500 at 11-11 as well. New Haven has back-to-back road games this week when they travel to Assumption on February 9 and Le Moyne on February 13; those games will be covered in next week’s Charger Bulletin.