Women's College Basketball
Penn State University 95, Rider University 21
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.--Happy Valley it wasn't for the Rider University women's basketball as the Broncs were held to a program low in points, losing to the Penn State Nittany Lions Sunday afternoon in a non-conference game.
"We focused a lot on defense because we knew that Penn State could put a lot of points on the board," said head coach Lynn Milligan. "They proved that on Friday night in their first game (112 points at Dayton) so we went in there defensively really trying to take away their transition offense and force them into more of a half court game. We were not able to do that as well as we would have liked to."
For Rider (0-2), junior Ali Heller (Boca Raton, Fla./St. Andrews) was the leading scorer with six points, in 17 minutes off the bench.
The Lady Lions shot 53 percent from the field including 69 percent from three-point range and held the Broncs to 15 percent from the field for the game.
Penn State (2-0) led 17-10 and used a 36-4 run to end the opening half.
"Mid way through the first half we gave them some wide open looks and it pretty much went from there," Milligan added. ""Our offense came down to bad decision making and bad passing."
The Lady Lions out-scored the Broncs 42-7 in the final 20 minutes.
The Broncs committed 37 turnovers in the game.
"They jumped on us pretty good as far as their defensive pressure on our perimeter players, which caused us to turn the ball over quite a bit," Milligan said. "Our main defensive goal was to stop their transition offense particularly their three-point shooters and we didn't do a good job of that."
Rider scored 25 points in a MAAC tournament loss at Siena to end the 2009-10 season.
This was the first meeting between Rider and Penn State in women's basketball.
Rider opens the home portion of the 2010-11 schedule against Binghamton November 20 at 2pm in Alumni Gym.
"We learned that we still have a lot of work to do, obviously," Milligan said. "This week has got to be about us getting better and working on the little things that plagued us this weekend. We just are not able to get the ball where we need to get the ball. So we have to work on a lot of basic fundamentals and get back to doing the little things that make us successful instead of trying to make the spectacular play or the spectacular pass. We have to get back to basics."
-RU-
