Ambreelinne Ortman’s double-double performance led the way on Saturday as the West Chester women’s basketball team snapped a four-game losing streak with a 59-45 win at East Stroudsburg.
Ortman, a senior center from Millville, Pa., scored a career-high 23 points and added 14 rebounds for the Lady Rams, with most of those numbers coming from the second half. West Chester entered halftime leading East Stroudsburg just 25-24, but Ortman’s 15 points and 11 rebounds in the second half helped her team stretch its lead and eventually win by a 14-point margin.
Also contributing quite a bit to the Rams’ effort was senior forward Alex Lennon, who tied a school record with seven blocks in a game. That gives her 297 blocks in her career. Freshman Brittany Sicinski added 11 rebounds and grabbed four steals.
Overall, the shooting in the game was very poor. West Chester shot only 27.5 percent, while East Stroudsburg managed a measly 25 percent from the field. So what really may have made the difference in this game was the total number of shots each team was able to get off, with West Chester at 69 and ESU at 52. That’s a testament to the strong defense the Lady Rams played throughout the game.
Several players shot very poorly for the Lady Rams, including Jasmen Clark at 1-for-9, Meghan Kerrigan at 1-for-8, and Carly Strickland at 2-for-7. They were made up for by Ortman’s outstanding performance, as the center shot 8-for-17 including 3-for-8 from three-point range as she scored her 23 points.
History was on West Chester’s side during the contest. Entering the game, the Lady Rams had beaten East Stroudsburg in 30 of the team’s past 33 meetings. For whatever reason, West Chester has the Warriors’ number, and it showed on Saturday.
With the win, West Chester solidified its spot in the PSAC East standings. In fact, the Lady Rams are now locked into the No. 5 seed for the PSAC Tournament, which starts next weekend. The team’s only remaining game is a visit to cross-county rivals Cheyney, who are in last place in the division with an abysmal 1-20 record.
On Wednesday, West Chester blew its chance to host a first-round game in that PSAC Tournament by losing to Shippensburg, 78-68, in the team’s final regular season home game.
Shippensburg had two scorers with more than 20 points, while Clark was West Chester’s top scorer with 16. Sicinski added 12, Kerrigan added 11, and Lennon scored 11 of her own for the Rams, but it wasn’t enough to overcome an impressive offensive performance by Shippensburg.
The free-throw line was where the game was decided. Controversial calls in Shippensburg’s favor took the game out of the Lady Rams’ hands. The Raiders got to the line an astonishing 50 times over the course of the game, including 35 times in the second half. They made 41 of their free throws. Meanwhile, West Chester only earned 13 free-throw attempts, making nine. That was a 33-point difference just in free throws, and the final margin of Shippensburg’s victory was only 10.
In fact, West Chester made eight more field goal attempts than Shippensburg, and six more three-pointers. Normally, scoring 18 more points than an opponent with three-pointers would lead to a comfortable victory. But that huge margin of free throws was more than enough to counterbalance that, and Shippensburg came out on top.
That loss made it impossible for West Chester to catch Kutztown, who are now locked into the fourth seed in the division. The Rams, after their regular season finale Wednesday against Cheyney, will travel to Kutztown for the first round of the PSAC Tournament on Saturday.
Joey Samuel is a fourth-year student majoring in political science and Spanish. He can be reached at JS719745@wcupa.edu.