The Pitt-Bradford women's basketball team tied a season-high with 11 three-pointers Saturday and ran past Franciscan 76-51.
The Panthers came out firing, scoring the game's first 12 points and hitting six threes in the opening quarter, to build a 22-point lead. Pitt-Bradford led 48-22 at the break and extended its advantage to 40 at point in the third quarter behind its defense.
Franciscan went the first eight minutes of the second half without a field goal and turned the ball over seven times in the third period.
Pitt-Bradford scored a whopping 38 points off 26 Baron turnovers and netted 15 second-chance points, outrebounding Franciscan 16-5 on the offensive glass. The Panthers cooled off in the second half and finished the game shooting 38 percent. Franciscan hit on 37 percent of its attempts and was just 13 of 23 from the free throw line.
All 10 Panthers scored, led by Ali Rinfrette's team-high 16 points and four made three-pointers. Anna Colebert chipped in with 11 points, and Kaserra Owens totaled 10. Brittany Watts narrowly missed a double-double, finishing with nine points and nine rebounds. Darien Lantz dished out a season-high nine assists, and four players recorded four steals apiece.
"I think both teams played really hard," head coach Sean Brown Sr. said. "Our defense was really good tonight. We communicated and helped each other out the entire game."
Brown credited the defensive effort to the play of Owens, who has slowly been building her stamina back up after missing significant time last year and the first two games of this season to an injury.
"Our defense was sparked by Kaserra Owens," Brown Sr. said. "It's great to have Kaserra back in the fold after battling back from a really bad injury last year.
She's a four-year starter so it's nice to have her back doing some of the things she's been accustomed to doing."
Pitt-Bradford improves to 3-5 on the season and 2-1 in the AMCC. The Panthers have the week off for finals before closing out the first half of their schedule next Saturday at Mt. Aloysius.
