SYRACUSE, N.Y. – Briana Bradford (Waterbury, Conn./Holy Cross) scored all 20 of her points in the first half as the University of New Haven women’s basketball team built a lead at Le Moyne on Saturday, and Bria Moore (West Haven, Conn./Hill Regional Career) added 11 of her team-high 21 points in the second frame as the Chargers held off the host Dolphins to claim an 80-72 victory.
With the win, New Haven improves to 4-3 overall with a 3-1 Northeast-10 tally. Le Moyne falls to 2-4 on the season and 1-1 in conference action.
Moore’s 21 points came on 8-for-14 shooting with a pair of three-pointers. Bradford went 8-for-12 with three treys to net 20 for the second time in her career. Anh-Dao Tran (Webster, Mass./Holy Name) added 15 points, and Aquillin Hayes (Harlem, N.Y./Wings Academy) fell one point shy of her third consecutive double-double with nine points and a game-high 12 rebounds. Rykema Stone (Bronx, N.Y./Wings Academy) scored eight, Nikita Reddy (Germantown, Md./Germantown) had three and Ashley LeBlanc (Methuen, Mass./Methuen) and Elizabeth Cruso (Westerly, R.I./Westerly) netted two points apiece. The Chargers shot a season-high 47.1 percent from the field (32-for-68) with seven three-pointers (7-for-21, 33.3 percent) and a 9-for-12 (75 percent) showing at the free throw line.
Bradford and Reddy each distributed five assists. Hayes blocked two shots and had four of the Chargers’ seven steals.
New Haven won the battle under the boards with a 42-39 rebounding edge, and the Dolphins held a 15-12 advantage in turnovers.
Le Moyne’s Maggie Brown led all players with 22 points.
The Chargers never trailed in the game; Tran scored the first bucket of the contest and, after a Brown jumper, Moore converted the layup that ultimately gave New Haven the lead for good at 4-2 just 89 seconds into play. Moore’s basket also started a 12-2 run that spotted the Chargers’ a double-digit advantage, and New Haven finished the half on another run – ceding just two field goals over the final 7:09 to head into the locker room with a 54-32 lead.
The lead grew as large as 24 points, and stood at 23 – 67-44 – with 14:43 remaining in the second half before the home team started to rally. Le Moyne poured in the next 18 points over a span of 8:02, trimming the margin to five points before Tran ended the drought with a jumper. The margin briefly shrank to a single possession at 69-66 with just over six minutes to go, but the New Haven offense would not lose its stroke again and held off the Dolphins to leave Syracuse with an 80-72 victory.
The Chargers, who have played six of their first seven games away from Charger Gymnasium, close out the calendar year with a pair of NE-10 home games – Tuesday, Dec. 4 against American International and Saturday, Dec. 8 against Southern Connecticut State.
