Nighthawks Fall To Hawks in Quarterfinals

Becker College freshman Haley Ooms (Valatie, N.Y./Ichabod Crane) drained 17 of her game-high 24 points in the second half as the Hawks erased an eight point deficit to defeat Newbury College, 73-71 in the New England Collegiate Conference (NECC) quarterfinals, Tuesday evening.

The Nighthawks jumped out in front early, taking a commanding 14-7 lead eight minutes into the contest. Junior guard Morganna Machado (Attleboro, Mass./Attleboro) was red-hot from the field netting 12 points with half of them coming from beyond the arc. Machado gave Newbury their largest lead of the contest, 16, draining her second trey of the half with 7:44 left in the period to give the Nighthawks the 25-9 advantage.

Becker would not be denied and began to chip away at the lead. Senior forward Heidi Miller (Sanborton, N.H./Winnisquam) cut the deficit to single digits with a good jumper sparking a 10-0 Hawks run with under six minutes left in the half. Newbury kept matching buckets for the remainder of the period and took the eight point, 36-28, lead into the locker room.

Sophomore forward Jasmine Bishop (Waterville, Maine/Waterville Senior) opened up the second half with a lay-up 22 seconds into the period to push the Newbury lead back to 10. Becker responded with a 14-2 run to take their first lead, 41-40, of the contest since 16:01 of the first.

Newbury junior guard Shayla White (Dorcester, Mass./Wellesley) answered draining a long range trey to give the Nighthawks back the lead but it was short lived. Freshman forward Tatiana Mojica (Worcester, Mass./Doherty) answered right back, knotting up the contest at 43 with a lay-up.

It was a barn-burner for the next three minutes there were two ties and four lead changes. Following sophomore center Catherine O’Connell’s (Quincy ,Mass./North Quincy) lay-up to re-gain the lead, Newbury did not surrender the lead for the next 10 minutes  but Becker was not going to go away.

Down by seven with under four minutes left to play in regulation, Becker went on a 7-4 run, in which Ooms knocked down four of the five Hawk field goals, to pull within one of the lead. Following two Nighthawk turnovers, Ooms launched her fourth trey of the game, with 14 seconds on the clock, to send Becker on to the NECC semifinals. They will face the number one seed, Lesley University (15-10, 13-3 NECC) on Friday February 25^th at 6:00pm in Quincy, Mass. on the campus of Eastern Nazarene College.

- Game photo by: Samantha Yanofsky