The Gannon University women’s basketball team took a break from Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference play Tuesday night and defeated Le Moyne College, 74-71, at the Hammermill Center.
The Knights, 18-6 overall and 16-4 in conference play, have rebounded from consecutive losses to win three straight.
Mollie Sebald netted a game-high 19 points in Gannon’s win over Le Moyne.
Last week, Gannon whipped Clarion, 79-44, and defeated the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, 69-58.
The wins enabled the Knights to maintain their grip on third place in the PSAC West with only two conference games remaining before the PSAC tournament.
The first of those two games will come Saturday at the first-place California University of Pennsylvania Vulcans (21-3, 17-2).
Gannon rode a 42-25 rebounding advantage in the win over Clarion while spreading the ball around by totaling 19 assists with five players in double figures.
Sebald led the way with 16 points, while Brittany Batts and Nettie Blake each added 13. McKenna Shives scored 11 and Lanise Saunders provided 10 points off the bench.
The Knights shot 50 percent from the field, holding Clarion to 35 percent shooting.
Gannon was dominant in the paint against Johnstown as well, totaling 19 offensive rebounds and capitalizing on Mountain Cat mistakes with 22 points off 18 turnovers.
Morgan Neighbors led the Knights in scoring with 15 in only 18 minutes, while Sebald added 14 and Brianna Brennan broke out with 11 points off the bench.
The Knights were carried by their reserves as Gannon totaled 46 bench points, providing more than half of the team’s total points for the game.
The Knights held Johnstown to 30 percent shooting for the game, edging the Mountain Cats by shooting 35 percent.
The win against Johnstown, which came on the day of the Gannon Athletic Hall of Fame induction ceremony, improved the Knights’ home record to 9-1.
Junior point guard Amanda Berchtold totaled 11 assists in the past two games and came within one rebound of a career high (eight) Saturday.
Berchtold said the team was glad to take care of business this week, but knows there is still work to be done.
“We want to win out the rest of our regular-season games to try to get a good seed in the tournament,” Berchtold said. “Saturday’s game will be a big one for us since Cal is in first place in the PSAC.
“A win would help us in Atlantic regional seeding and keep our spot at third in the PSAC. Every game is important from now on.”
Shives said that the Knights will look to maintain a high level of focus at every practice with only two games left in the regular season.
“The goal is to come out strong every time we take the floor and establish our game and impose our will,” Shives said, “and we feel we can do that and go in strong to the conference tournament and beyond.”
MAX SENG
