West Chester raced out to a 15-point first quarter advantage, before Pitt-Johnstown got as close as seven in the fourth quarter, but the Mountain Cats were never able to fully recover and suffered a 64-52 PSAC Crossover loss at West Chester, Wednesday evening.
Gabrielle Smith's 18 points and seven rebounds led the way for Pitt-Johnstown, which slipped to 10-10 overall and 6-7 in the PSAC.
West Chester got off to a fast start and opened-up a 15-point first quarter lead. After
Nicole Olkosky's short jumper on Pitt-Johnstown's first possession of the game, the Golden Rams went on to outscore the Mountain Cats 19-3 the rest of the way. Gabrielle Troisi's basket capped a 10-0 run to make it 10-2, before a Destiny Jefferson 3-pointer and a jumper from Katherine Fisher at 1:08 increased West Chester's lead to 19-4.
The Mountain Cats got back in it with a 14-6 run of their own over the first five minutes of the second quarter. Five straight points from
Alli McGrath and a free-throw from Smith got Pitt-Johnstown's deficit down to six, but West Chester was able to push it back out to 10 at 31-21 at the half on a Rylee Power basket.
A pair of buckets by Madison Torresin to open the third quarter and a layup from Power at the 5:28 mark increased the Golden Rams lead to 39-23. West Chester then pushed it out to 18 at 44-26 on Power's 3-pointer. Pitt-Johnstown scored the next seven, including baskets by
Tori Moreland and
Maddie Shanahan to cut it to 11, but Torresin's basket with under :30 left in the quarter rebuilt the Golden Ram's lead to 48-33.
Pitt-Johnstown continued to claw its way back and narrowed the gap to seven on four occasions with the last coming on Olkosky's short jumper with :43 remaining, but that was as close as it would get.
Along with Smith, Pitt-Johnstown got nine points and nine rebounds from Olkosky and eight points and nine rebounds from McGrath. Moreland added seven points for the Mountain Cats.
Pitt-Johnstown shot just 30.0% (18-60) from the field, 5-28 from behind the arc, and 11-17 from the free-throw line, while West Chester shot 43.1% (25-68) from the floor, 3-12 from 3-point range, and 11-14 from the charity stripe.
Torresin's game-high 20 points and six rebounds paced West Chester. The Golden Rams, who improved to 10-11 overall and 6-7 in conference-play, also got 14 points and six rebounds from Fisher and 13 points and a team-high seven rebounds from Power.
Pitt-Johnstown returns home to host a PSAC doubleheader with the men's team against Gannon, Saturday afternoon in the Sports Center. The women will tip-off against the Golden Knights at 1 p.m., with the men's game scheduled for 3 p.m.
