The Suffolk University Women's Basketball team prevailed in the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Division-III New England Tournament semifinals with a 45-41 victory over Wellesley College on Saturday afternoon.
The Rams put together a 16-2 run in the second half highlighted by a 10-point effort in the period from sophomore guard Shelby Santini (Winchester, Mass.) to advance to Sunday's championship game.
Suffolk will now face Castleton State College in the finals tomorrow afternoon, Sunday at 1:00pm.
The win moves the Rams to a 23-7 record, while the victory was the 300th win for Suffolk under the leadership of Head Coach Ed Leyden. Leyden, the 2012-13 Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) Women's Basketball Coach of the Year has 311 total career victories in 20 seasons as a collegiate head coach.
Junior Jennifer Ruys (Wallingford, Conn.) continued her torrid pace as she led all scorers with 17 points in the game. Saturday's contest was the sixth straight game Suffolk has been involved in where Ruys was the leading scorers on both sides of the court.
It was a tale of two halves on Saturday for the Rams as they were slow out of the gates in the first half scoring just 13 points total in the opening 20 minutes of the contest. They headed into halftime down by a 21-13 score.
Wellesley College sophomore Natalie Anderson (Bellevue, Wash.) would put the Rams in a 13-point hole three minutes into the second period.
Sophomore Iliana Quadri (Sudbury, Mass.) would then score four straight points, before a three-pointer by Santini capped off an 8-1 run to bring the Rams back within six points in the next three minutes.
The Rams would continue their offensive charge from there with Ruys making a pair of free-throws and consecutive jumpers before another Quadri field-goal started their large second half run.
A three-pointer by senior Jacqueline Vienneau (Salem, N.H.) at the 6:23 mark brought Suffolk within one point, 33-32 as she took an assist from Ruys who found her open behind the arc.
Sophomore Tori Brillaud (North Andover, Mass.) then came up with a defensive takeaway on the next possesion as Santini struck for one of her two three-pointers on the day giving the Rams their first lead late in the contest, 35-33 which they would not relinquish from there.
Suffolk would go 6-for-6 from the free-throw line in the closing minutes to close out their victory.
Vienneau and Quadri each finished the evening with eight points for the Rams, while Brillaud led all rebounders in the game with eight.
Suffolk held a 37-31 edge in rebounds in the contest once again winning the battle on the glass. They are now 19-3 in games this season in doing so.
Wellesley was balanced in Saturday's contest with nine players recording points on the day, none bigger than senior Malia Maier (Torrance, Calif.) who recorded her 1,000th career point for the Blue in the defeat. She was one of two Wellesley players to score eight points in the game.
Wellesley finished the day shooting just 25.5-percent from the floor as a team as the Suffolk defense was once again a key to victory. The Rams have now held the opposition under 30-percent shooting as a team on 13 occasions this season, while they have held opponents under 50 points scoring in a game 15 times.
Suffolk will be looking to claim the first ECAC Championship in program history on Sunday afternoon.