Hartford, CT ? The University of Hartford women's basketball team visited the University of Connecticut at the Hartford Civic Center on Friday night where the Huskies defeated the Hawks 62-36. The Huskies moved to 10-0 on the season and the Hawks dropped to 7-6 overall.
The Hawks were led by sophomore Lisa Etienne who finished the game with 12 points and four rebounds. The other leading scorers for the Hawks were Katie Kelley with nine and Danielle Hood with eight. The leading scorers for Connecticut were Renee Montgomery with 16 and Kalana Greene with 14.
Hartford made things interesting in the first half holding the Huskies to just a 30.3 field goal percentage, the lowest shooting percentage in a half for the Huskies since they logged a 28.6 percent against Duke on March 28, 2006. The Hawks got their biggest lead of the game with 9:03 remaining in the first half when Etienne hit a jumper from the foul line to put Hartford up by five. The Hawks could only manage to come up with three more points in the half before heading to the locker room with the Huskies leading 26-18.
Hartford was in a drought and did not hit a field goal for over six minutes when Kelley finally managed to scrounge up a lay-up, three minutes into the second half. The lack of scoring for the Hawks allowed the Huskies to go on a 20-0 run. Hartford was not able to recover and would only get within 14 points for the remainder of the game.
“Tonight was another opportunity for us to work on our basketball game and find our identity as a basketball program,” said head coach Jennifer Rizzotti. “We missed some shots and failed to make our free throws and make some breaks for ourselves. We have a lot of good things to work with and I feel that if we can play that good for stretches against that good of a team, then there are really no excuses to go backwards from this point on.”
Tonight's game was the final game of 2006 and the Hawks final non-conference game of the season. Hartford will not play again until after the New Year with its first conference game of the season at Stony Brook on January 4. The Seawolves were the only conference opponent who the Hawks fell victim to away from home last season. Hartford and Stony Brook will tip off on Thursday at 7:00 p.m.
