The Massachusetts women’s basketball team returned to its home crowd in Amherst and defeated Vermont 68-63 in a come-from-behind win. With the victory, UMass improves to 11-2 on the season.
Sydney Taylor led the Minutewomen in scoring with 19 points on 8-of-17 shooting. She also tallied five rebounds and three assists. The 5-foot-9-inch junior from Huntington Station, New York is No. 3 in the Atlantic 10 in scoring (15.8 points-per-game) this season, a slot behind fellow teammate Sam Breen (17.5 ppg).
“[Taylor’s] been consistent,” UMass coach Tory Verdi said. “She’s been great in practice this whole past week, just with her energy, her want to. A lot of that is starting to carry over into the way she plays. [Taylor] is playing her best basketball right now.”
After having more than a week off after trouncing Columbia in New York City, the Minutewomen got off to a slow start against the Catamounts (5-5). Midway through the first quarter, the rust was evident. UMass was plagued by mistakes and saw a double-digit deficit because of it.
The Minutewomen lost four turnovers in five minutes of action, and Vermont capitalized scoring five points from UMass errors. The Minutewomen found good looks at the basket but failed to get their attempts to fall. UMass shot a combined 3-of-18 and trailed by nine points after one quarter of play.
“It wasn’t as easy probably as our players thought it was going to be,” Verdi said. “[Vermont] did a good job executing offensively and taking advantage of their strengths in scoring the ball and shooting the ball. I don’t think it was our best defensive performance, so we got to look at the film and continue to get better.”
Towards the end of the second quarter, the Minutewomen pushed past the early adversity and turned things around. UMass was able to string together stops and take the lead after Destiney Philoxy converted two free throws after drawing a foul on a mid-range jump shot with one-tenth of a second remaining in the first half.
While she did not impress with her scoring, Philoxy affected the game in other areas. She amazed the crowd with her flashy passing and fed her teammates great opportunities to score. The senior guard finished with a team-high six assists to go along with seven rebounds and two steals. With nine seconds left in the game, Philoxy nailed two free throws to give the Minutewomen a five-point lead and put the game out of reach.
“[Philoxy] is always looking for her teammates,” Verdi said. “She’s our catalyst. She makes us go. Change of possession, we want to get out there and attack and she does a great job of that. Getting teams and defenses in rotation, that’s what we want.”
While the game was not all cut-and-paste from the get-go, Angelique Ngalakulondi reigned supreme over the glass all night grabbing 11 rebounds, with eight of them coming on the offensive end, and trailed only Taylor in scoring with 17 points. She recorded her third double-double of the season and controlled the boards all four quarters, helping the Minutewomen beat the Catamounts 45-27 in the rebound category.
“Honestly, in my mind, they’re all mine,” Ngalakulondi said when asked about offensive rebounding ability. “That’s kind of my mentality. Around the area, anywhere that I am, I need the ball.”
UMass will travel to Connecticut to take on the Hartford Hawks Wednesday at 12 p.m.
Michael Araujo can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @araujo_michael_.
