By Duane Cochran
FAIRMONT — Less than a minute into last night’s Fairmont State-Salem International women’s basketball game at the Joe Retton Arena the visiting Lady Tigers held a 2-0 lead and were playing with a lot of emotion.
Six minutes later the Lady Falcons had rained all over Salem’s parade with a 16-0 run to take control of the contest for good as they cruised to an 83-34 victory to continue their dominance over the Lady Tigers.
The win, the Lady Falcons’ 16th in a row over Salem, improved Fairmont State to 2-1 overall and to 1-0 in the WVC. The Lady Tigers, meanwhile, fell to 0-2 overall and to 0-1 in the league.
Both teams last night featured rosters full of freshmen, but it was FSU’s freshman who came up big in their team’s lopsided win.
Redshirt freshman guard Lauren Streicher led the way for the Lady Falcons with a career-high 14 points, 12 of which came on a 4-of-7 showing from behind the 3-point line.
“I think the biggest thing tonight was that I felt like we improved as a team,” said Streicher. “We know Salem is young and inexperienced, but we ran our offense pretty well, we played together pretty well as a team and I think we did a nice job defensively.
“Our ball pressure, especially in the first half, was pretty good. We double-teamed them a lot and forced 25 first-half turnovers and a lot of those we were able to convert into points. This was a nice win for us to go into the Thanksgiving break on.”
Indeed it was.
Lady Falcon true freshman guards Kaitlin Snyder and Tiffany Nicholson also enjoyed career-high performances in the victory. Snyder finished with 10 points and three steals, while Nicholson came off the bench to add 12 points and four steals.
“We have a lot of young, new players this year and tonight coach Mac (Steve McDonald) wanted us to set the tempo early and play with a lot of intensity and I believe we accomplished this evening what he wanted us to,” said Snyder. “Coming off of the Milligan loss against a team we feel like we should’ve beaten, we wanted to come out tonight and prove ourselves. We didn’t want to have any type of letdown and we didn’t. I think everyone played hard for us.”
Nicholson agrees.
“One of our goals tonight was to force Salem into a lot of turnovers and to try to limit our own turnovers,” she said. “We’ve worked really hard this past week in practice trying to do that. I think defensively in this game we did a lot of good things. We forced them to make several mistakes and then tried to cash in on them.
“We probably still had a few too many turnovers ourselves, but we played hard and as a team I think we got a little better. Right now that’s our main goal. We know we’ve got to keep improving.”
Senior guard Ashley Vavrek added 13 points and four steals for FSU which shot 50 percent as a team from the field (33-of-66).
The Lady Falcons also got eight points and five steals off the bench from senior Mo Gattuso, six points from junior Lauren Gilbert, five points, eight rebounds and three blocked shots from junior center Rachel Murray and four points and eight rebounds from backup junior center Jaclyn Murray.
FSU’s defense forced a season-high 44 turnovers by the freshman-dominated Lady Tigers and recorded a season-high 28 steals.
Salem was led by Flora Amayo and Briana Terry, who both finished with nine points. They both, however, had trouble controlling the basketball as Amayo suffered 16 turnovers herself, while Terry turned the ball over eight times.
Fairmont State will now break for Thanksgiving and return to practice on Saturday. The Lady Falcons will be back in action Tuesday, Dec. 1 at the Joe Retton Arena when they host Ohio Valley University in a WVC contest at 5:30 p.m.
