Jan. 9, 2010

Box Score

PHILADELPHIA - The Saint Joseph's women's basketball team opened Atlantic 10 play with a 62-57 victory over Fordham Saturday afternoon at Hagan Arena. In a closely-contested game, the Hawks led the entire second half as senior forward Brittany Ford scored 14 of her team-high 18 points in the stanza.

Saint Joseph's opened the game with a 9-3 advantage as it made three of its opening four shots.

The Rams (6-10, 0-1 Atlantic 10) fought back to take the lead, holding a 17-15 advantage with 5:57 to go in the first half. From there, Saint Joseph's got back-to-back-to-back three pointers from freshman guard Ashley Prim, sophomore guard Katie Kuester and junior forward Dominique Bryant to bolster a 9-3 run and regain the lead, 24-20.

Fordham scored the opening basket of the second half to make it a 26-24 game, but SJU got three-straight baskets as a layup by senior forward Ashley Logue extended the hawks lead to 32-24 at 17:44.

The game remained a single-digit difference, with the Rams making it a 42-40 game on a jump shot by Becky Peters at 10:20.

After exchanging baskets with Fordham, keeping the game at 44-42, Ford ripped off six points in a row to give SJU a 50-42 lead on a jump shot with 7:13 left to go.

Fordham would cut the deficit to four twice, but each time the Hawks responded to improve to 7-8 on the year.

As a team, SJU shot 44.2 percent from the floor (23-of-52), 36.4 percent from behind the arc (4-of-11) and 12-of-20 from the foul line. At the other end, Fordham went 22-of-59 from the field (37.3 percent), 4-of-14 from three-point range (28.6 percent) and 9-of-15 from the foul line.

Ford added a team-best eight rebounds to go with her 18 points, while Logue was the only other Hawk in double figures, finishing with 14 points.

Randall Hurst paced Fordham with 19 points in the losing effort.

Saint Joseph's returns to action Tuesday when the Hawks host Penn at noon.

*** Photos from today's game available at www.sidephotos.com