WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Hampton University women’s basketball team missed its first 11 shots and last 10 in Thursday’s second-round game of the CAA Tournament yet nearly pulled off the upset.
Instead, No. 5 seed Monmouth used a strong inside game and solid shooting to top the No.13 Pirates 62-54 at the CareFirst Arena, home of the WNBA’s Washington Mystics.
“That’s how hard we play,” Hampton coach Tamisha Augustin said in explaining how her team still was in the game despite those two big scoring droughts. “We took 33 more shot attempts. Some of those shots have to go down.”
Hampton (8-23) was led by Aisha Dabo, a junior forward, with 12 points and eight boards, and she was the only Pirates player in double figures. Amyah Reaves, a senior guard, was among a group of four with eight each, and she added seven steals, one shy of the tournament single-game record.
“I thought on both days she was really terrific on defense, made a lot of plays,” Augustin said.
The Hawks (16-14), who beat the Pirates 62-60 in their regular-season matchup, got 16 points from Divine Dibula, 13 from Damaris Rodriguez and 12 from Belle Kranbuhl. Taisha Exanor added a game-high 12 rebounds and five points.
and outscored the Seawolves in the paint (36-34) and in second-chance points (13-8). Against the Hawks, they were outscored 38-30 in the paint, 15-14 on second-chance points and were even on bench points at 24. And they shot 42.1 percent to Hampton’s 28.8.”]
Reaves’ driving layup with 2:59 left cut Monmouth’s lead to three (57-54), but the Pirates didn’t score again, and it was still a four-point game with just under two minutes left. At the start of the game, Dabo’s tip-in ended a drought of nearly 6½ minutes, but the Pirates trailed by just four. They were down 24-6 early in the second quarter. A 9-0 second-quarter run fueled a 25-5 spurt to give them a 31-29 lead at the break.
Monmouth cut it to one after three and then scored the first six points of the fourth quarter for a 49-42 lead and never tailed again, although Reaves got the Pirates within three with her team’s final basket of the game.
Hampton was trying to post its second win in two days after going 3-13 in the regular season, Augustin’s first with the Pirates. She said that record was deceiving as they lost a number of games by 10 or fewer p0ints.
“I think there’s only a few of them that’s been a bad matchup,” she said. “Everything else has been a three-possession game for us. That’s the difference in winning and losing, a couple of shots going down and hitting the necessary shots.”
Originally Published: