PHILADELPHIA – Tied 32-32 at the halftime break, the Saint Joseph's women's basketball squad held Duquesne scoreless in the third quarter en route to a 60-52 win over the Dukes in the Atlantic 10 regular-season home finale in Hagan Arena on Sunday afternoon. Going 2-0 on the weekend, SJU improves to 7-9 overall (5-9 A-10) to claim the 10th seed (and a First Round bye) for next week's 2021 A-10 Championship.

"I thought the second half really set the tone," said head coach Cindy Griffin following the win. "We were obviously going back and forth in the first two quarters, tied at the half. Holding them to zero points in the third quarter was pretty impressive. Our defense stepped up. We executed when we needed to and got stops when we needed to."

Prior to the start of the game, Saint Joseph's recognized it's four seniors - four-year guards Lula Roig and Mary Sheehan and graduate student forward additions Olivia Ramil and Alexis Santarelli - for their dedication to the Saint Joseph's women's basketball program over their careers.

Sophomore guard Kaliah Henderson dropped a game-high 16 points on 7-of-15 shooting from the field and added a game-high seven rebounds off the bench while junior guard Katie Jekot added 13 points on 6-of-12 shooting from the field to go with a team-high four assists in the start alongside Roig, Sheehan, Ramil, and Santarelli; Roig made her first start of the season while Ramil's start also came as her SJU debut.

How It Happened
Q1 & Q2 – Led by Roig's four points, seven different Hawks scored in a first quarter that saw Duquesne lead by one, 16-15, through the opening 10:00; SJU's first two points of the day came on Ramil's first SJU bucket. Duquesne scored the first five points of the second quarter to take a six-point edge, 21-15, by the 8:33 mark, but the Hawks chipped away until Jekot hit a driving lay-up at the 3:33 mark to tie it up, 26-26. The lead would change three more times before junior forward Katie Mayock scored on a lay-up with nine ticks remaining before the halftime break to again tie it, 32-32. Jekot (seven) and Smalls (six) combined for 13 of SJU's 17 points in the second.

Q3 – Saint Joseph's kept Duquesne (5-10, 4-7 A-10) scoreless in the third quarter, holding the Dukes 0-of-12 from the field and 0-of-3 from deep. On the offensive end, Henderson and Mayock each hit a field goal and Henderson and Roig combined to go 5-of-6 from the stripe to take a nine-point advantage, 41-32, into the fourth.

Q4 – Paced by Henderson's 10 points, the Hawks shot 60.0 percent (9-of-15) from the field in the final quarter, converting 16 points in the paint en route to the eight-point win.