The Massachusetts women’s basketball team won the tip, and the action between the two squads mired in the middle of the conference began. Megan Olbrys, 13th in the Atlantic 10 in points per game, caught the ball in the low post and dealt with an immediate double team. Roaming around the perimeter was freshman Yahmani McKayle, who Olbrys found uncovered. Shooting 40.4 percent from beyond the arc, a defender flying out to contest the shot didn’t make much of a difference, as the first shot of the game was drained, adding three points to the Minutewomen’s (14-11, 9-5 A-10) tally.
Duquesne didn’t have an answer on the next possession when Olbrys caught the ball on the break and laid it in for two, extending the lead to five. Chinenye Odenigbo caught the ball in the low post shortly after, backing down her defender before going up with a hook shot that made the run 7-0. Less than a minute later, Stefanie Kulesza was on the cleanup crew for a McKayle miss, putting the Dukes (15-9, 6-7 A-10) in a 9-0 hole two and a half minutes into the game.
UMass couldn’t keep up this total domination for the remainder of the game, but it set the tone early for what Wednesday’s contest eventually became. In a game that was never close after the opening frame, the Minutewomen dismantled Duquesne in a wire-to-wire 72-52 win.
“[Wednesday] was certainly not a very good night, our effort was embarrassing in the first two quarters,” Dukes head coach Dan Burt said. “… [It] was some of the most poor basketball that I’ve ever been associated with in my 18 years being at Duquesne … Our lack of size was something that UMass exposed … another situation … [McKayle] is down there on the forward spot and we didn’t think that we should maybe post that up and have a mouse in the house situation.”
Kulesza had perhaps the greatest game of her college career, breaking her career high in rebounds before the first half had even concluded. Finishing with 22 rebounds, she had just one less rebound than Duquesne had as a team. Like the 9-0 run, Kulesza’s run of dominance wasn’t sustained throughout the game, but her early performance set the stage for the Minutewomen’s resounding victory. In addition to her record-setting night on the glass, Kulesza added 14 points, three assists and a steal.
On the scoring front, it remained scoring by committee as it has been for much of the season, as four players finished the game in double digits. Olbrys, McKayle and Allie Palmieri joined Kulesza in the double digits club, with Olbrys leading the team with 20 points to go along with nine rebounds, four assists, a block and a steal. Palmieri added 16 points of her own, while McKayle pitched in 13.
McKayle hit her second 3-pointer of the game with just over four minutes left after the Dukes began mounting a comeback. After leading by 31 at one point, the lead had slowly dwindled down to 16. The away team still had control, but in the midst of an 18-6 run that dated back to the end of the third quarter, it seemed as though the lead that UMass had for the entirety of the game was on the verge of slipping away. After McKayle’s 3, though, the scoring remained relatively stable for the remainder of the contest.
“We can take a moral note that we won the third and fourth quarter [Wednesday], but I mean that’s very hard to even shower off the first two quarters and look at the third and the fourth as a positive,” Burt said.
Despite the domination from open to close by the Minutewomen, some of the peripheral stats favored Duquesne on Wednesday evening. The Dukes bench outscored UMass 27-3, while the Minutewomen turned the ball over 20 times to Duquesne’s 15. Many of those turnovers were at the hands of Megan McConnell, who had seven steals. As the only mid-major player named on the Naismith Defensive Player of the Year watchlist, McConnell is averaging just over four steals a game. She co-led her team in points along with Andjela Matic, as they both dropped 15 points. Matic came into Wednesday’s contest averaging below six points a game.
With Rhode Island’s loss against George Mason happening concurrently with UMass’ contest, Massachusetts now sits alone at fifth in the conference with exactly two weeks of regular season basketball left. While a top-three seed is almost mathematically unobtainable at this point in the season, the fourth seed is still up for grabs as the Minutewomen are just half of a game back from Davidson, though the Wildcats own the tiebreaker over them with their victory on Feb. 8.
UMass is next in action on Sunday, Feb. 16, taking on George Mason from Fairfax, Va. Tipoff is scheduled for 3 p.m. and the game can be viewed on ESPN+.
Johnny Depin can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter/X @Jdepin101.
