By Hayden Choate
@choatehayden
The No. 10 Springfield College women’s basketball team improved to 16-0 on the season with a commanding 73-18 win over Wellesley College.
The Pride had a second-half full of dominance outsourcing the Blue, 29-5 to secure the win.
Springfield had three players with 10 or more points as junior Sam Hourihan had 16, and seniors Grace Dzindolet and Stephanie Lyons had 11 and 10 points respectively. Springfield showed their depth having 23 points and 23 rebounds come from players who came off the bench.
“Everybody scored, it was really important that everybody scored and we knew and recognized the importance of everybody’s needs and it was awesome to see that,” Springfield head coach Naomi Graves said. “That’s the beauty of this team what’s making this journey so much fun is that we have people that are ready to go and there’s no animosity, it’s really nice.”
Having such a great amount of depth has helped the team become successful on the scoreboard and helped build trust within each other.
“As a person coming off the bench I think everyone on the team just buys into the process,” sophomore Riley Robinson said. “We don’t really see it as starters and non-starters we see it as everyone has to give it their all and we’re all equally as important to get us to win this season so we just know that we just have to bring the same intensity and we just click all together.”
The Pride coming off a 69-56 road win against Middlebury were happy to be back in Blake Arena on Saturday afternoon.
“I think everything’s been up in the air with COVID obviously so we weren’t sure if we were going to have spectators this second part of the semester,” Robinson said. “It feels good we had the support of the community, the school and everyone here and we have a great student body that’s supporting us and that’s just keeping us going and we thank you guys for everything.”
“I thought it was great having all the fans back cheering,” sophomore Kayla Madden said. “Being able to see students back on campus and at the games is great and family being at the games. I think having spectators is huge with the energy in the gym especially in Blake is phenomenal.”
In addition to being 16-0, the Pride are now 2-0 on the season in NEWMAC play. Springfield enters a tough week with road games against MIT on Wednesday and Babson on Saturday.
Springfield defeated Babson at home in a non-conference game earlier this season, 75-71.
As the Pride move into the heart of their NEWMAC schedule, they know it’s important to focus on improving themselves.
“We just practice how we play, we don’t look past any opponents,” Robinson said. “We came in today, we were ready, we were focused on Wellesley, we’re gonna take what we learned today and use it in practice and we’re gonna use that for MIT.”
“I think we take something from every game, we take pieces that we do well, pieces that we didn’t do well and focus on those in practice and grind it out Monday and Tuesday,” Madden said.
Graves agreed with Robinson and Madden about her team being able to take things from games, work on it in practice then apply it to the next game.
“Then thrive on the competition,” Graves said about her team. “That’s what I think this team does. We really look at us and we do look at them but we really say this is what we need to do to be better.”
After the two road games in the upcoming week, Springfield returns to Blake arena to face Clark University on Feb. 2.
Photo: Joe Arruda/The Student