Balanced Effort Spurs Women’s Basketball to Victory in Home Opener

Thursday, November 10

Richmond, VA

6 p.m.

University of Richmond

2-0,0-0Atlantic 10

Mount St. Mary's

0-2,0-0MAAC

Mount St. Mary's

Richmond

Photo by: Stephen Blue

Balanced Effort Spurs Women’s Basketball to Victory in Home Opener

11/10/2022 | Women's Basketball

Box Score

RICHMOND, Va. – The University of Richmond women's basketball team shrugged off a slow start Thursday to take a commanding lead and never relinquished the upper hand to Mount St. Mary's, collecting an 87-44 victory at Robins Center.

"I am really proud of the group to continue the momentum from Monday's win," head coach Aaron Roussell said. "They didn't let it get to their head and had a good day of prep yesterday, after a quick off day. We felt like they were locked in and got good energy from the crowd."

The Spiders, now 2-0 on the season, dominated the Mountaineers in all aspects of the game. UR held the upper hand in rebounds (45-20), points from turnovers (32-10), points in the paint (40-8), and points from the bench (34-5).

"On a day I thought our defense was really good, they missed a lot of shots to only get five offensive rebounds to our 34 defensive rebounds," Roussell said. "That hasn't been [like that] in my time here, that's for sure."

Richmond flipped a five-point deficit to Mount St. Mary's two minutes into the game to close out the quarter on a 22-3 run. The Spiders crashed the boards, collecting 11 of 15 defensive boards in the period. Sophomore Katie Hill (Colts Neck, N.J.) and freshman Rachel Ullstrom (Auburn, Mass.) both paced the Spiders with five points and three rebounds, while juniors Addie Budnik (Highland Park, Ill.) and Grace Townsend (Midlothian, Va.) chipped in four each.

The Spiders quickly pushed their lead out to double up the Mountaineers two and a half minutes into the second quarter. Mount St. Mary's tallied the first bucket of the period before Richmond got back-to-back three pointers from Siobhan Ryan (Buffalo, N.Y.) and Hill which forced a Mountaineer time out. Ryan sunk a jumper out of the timeout to put UR up 20, at 33-13., and the Spiders took a 46-23 lead into the midway break.

Budnik paced the Spiders in the third quarter, hitting eight of her game-high 16 points in the third quarter. She scored seven of UR's first 11 points, with a huge three-pointer from sophomore Cayla Williams (Gainesville, Va.) mixed in to expand UR's lead to 31 by the 7:42 mark.

Richmond moved to the bench early and often and the reserves stepped right in to continue the pressure on both sides of the ball. Ullstrom posted a career-high 13 points and five rebounds, while Emilija Krista Grava (Ligatne, Latvia) chipped in eight points, five rebounds and two assists. Freshman Maggie Doogan (Broomall, Pa.) tallied a season-high six points, two boards and two assists while senior Angel Burgos (Richmond, Va.) scored five, pulled down five boards and dished out two assists.

Richmond heads back on the road to take on Clemson, Sunday (Nov. 13) on ACC Network Extra with tip-off set for 2 p.m.