Jan 3, 2015 4 min read

When Waynesburg University’s women’s basketball team defeated highly regarded La Roche two weeks ago, Yellow Jackets coach Sam Jones thought his injury-slowed squad had finally started to play to its potential.

However, after 15 minutes Saturday against Washington & Jefferson, Jones might have been thinking that glimmer of improvement was just a tease. Waynesburg trailed the Presidents by 20 points and were on the verge of being run out of Henry Memorial Center.

Waynesburg, however, came back from the brink by using some torrid long-range shooting, making 15 three-pointers and stunning W&J, 79-74, in a Presidents’ Athletic Conference game.

“This is who we really are,” Jones said confidently.

What the Yellow Jackets (1-2, 4-6) were on this day was a thorn in W&J’s side, sending the Presidents (3-1, 9-2) to a costly defeat that might come back to haunt W&J when it comes time to choose the field for the NCAA Division III tournament.

And this loss followed a similar script to W&J’s only other defeat, an overtime setback at home to Allegheny back in November. The Presidents squandered two double-digit leads, including one of 17 points, in that game. Against Waynesburg, W&J led 39-19 in the first half and 48-35 at halftime as point guard Danni Medovich made four of her five three-pointers in the opening 20 minutes.

In both losses, W&J failed to deliver a knockout punch or stop the opponent’s three-point shooting.

“If I knew why that happens, we’d be 11-0 instead of 9-2,” W&J coach Jina DeRubbo said.

“Even in the games that we’ve won, we’ve had moments when we didn’t play well for long stretches. It’s been the story of our season. We get up by 17 then we’re up by four. Then we’re up by 15 and then it’s back down to four. We have those spurts. We’ve talked about it. We had a dry spell early in this game but it didn’t last long, so I thought that’s progress.”

Waynesburg stopped that progress by putting together a 23-10 run over the opening eight minutes of the second half to tie the score at 58-58. The spurt was capped by a three-pointer by Hayden Giuliani. It was one of Waynesburg’s nine three-pointers in the second half.

Heather Davis scored 17 points to lead Waynesburg and Giuliani followed with 15. Both players made five three-pointers.

“Both of those players started the season in a shooting slump,” Jones said. “Heather broke out of hers today.”

Two free throws by Valerie Dunlap gave W&J a two-point advantage but Cassidy O’Keefe, a transfer from Slippery Rock who was playing in only her second game with Waynesburg, made a three to give the Yellow Jackets their first lead (61-60) since early in the game. Giuliani made another shot from behind the arc, and minutes later Heather Delaney drained a three-pointer that capped a 14-2 Waynesburg run that gave the Yellow Jackets a 72-62 lead.

The Presidents pulled to within 75-74 after a three by Erin Lavery and Beka Bellhy’s shot from the lane with 2:07 remaining, but W&J would not score the rest of the way. Another long-range shot by Giuliani, with 1:41 left, made it a two-possession game.

“We played really well against La Roche before Christmas break and that started to turn things for us,” Jones said. “The second half of this game was the best half of basketball we played all year.”

Maura Bobby scored 12 points and grabbed a team-high 10 rebounds. Jones said it was key that Waynebsurg returned two of its injured players, guared Lauren Blair and forward Rachel Lovely, for the game. He also praised the defensive job of Delaney.

Bellhy led five W&J players in double figures with 19 points and 13 rebounds. Medovich was held to four points in the second half and finished with 18. Amirah Moore scored 11 points off the bench, and Dunlap and Taylor Cortazzo each scored 10.

“We started off OK, then we had a letdown,” Jones said. “W&J had all the energy in the first half and Medovich wasn’t missing. We didn’t play with much energy, but we made a couple shots late in the first half that helped change things.”