MSU Women’s Basketball Opening Game
Written by Jeff Ramella on November 19, 2019
By Cathryn Pace
Tuesday, November 12th was the opening game for Montclair State’s Women’s Basketball team. The Red Hawks faced the Hawks of Hunter College for their home opener at the Panzer Athletic Center, and although they didn’t start the scoring, they did come out on top. By the end of the first quarter, Montclair was up 18 to 15, but the deficit increased slightly at the end of the first half with Montclair leading 32 to 27. The fate of Hunter College was sealed at the last buzzer ended the fourth quarter with the Red Hawks defeating them 66 to 58.
The Montclair defense went to work and did what was necessary to keep possession of the ball as much as possible. The high paced game had a total of 23 points off of turnovers, and 19 of them were scored by Montclair. Hunter seemed to be having a difficult time shutting down the RedHawk offense and defended them rather messily offering Montclair 19 possible points in free throw opportunities; of the 19 shots, Montclair capitalized on 13 of them. In the fourth quarter of the game, Hunter had a player foul out further evidencing their defensive struggle.
Overall the RedHawks were communicating really well and it definitely was reflected on the court. However, the star of the game was clearly number 23, junior Kayla Bush of Montclair State University. Bush, a forward hailing from Morristown, New Jersey, scored a total of 18 points for the Red Hawks, the most scored in the game overall by a single player. She also ended the game with 13 rebounds, once again taking first place overall.
This is the 14th time Montclair State has faced Hunter College and this win put them on a 10 game win streak against the Hunter Hawks. Montclair State University has been competing against Hunter College since the 1970s and has only lost once out of all their meetings.
The next two games for the Montclair State RedHawks will be away in Connecticut. They will face Springfield College this coming Friday, November 15th, and Trinity College this Saturday, November 16th. The team will be back home on Wednesday, November 20th to face off against Fairleigh Dickinson University at 6:00 PM. The game should be an interesting one if the Red Hawks keep the team chemistry going strong.
