By: Justin Clear-Vekinis, News Correspondent
Sophomore guard Afreyea Tolbert scored a career-high 18 points to aid the women’s basketball team in a 69-56 win over William & Mary at Solomon Court Sunday.
Alongside Tolbert, junior guards Jamie Conroy and Kashaia Cannon added eight and 14 points, respectively.
“We are focusing on our discipline, our communication and being able to follow the game plan,” Cannon said. “When we do this we’ll be fine and we’ll step it up and win games consistently.”
The Huskies now sit 6-8 on the season and 1-2 in Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) play.
Head coach Daynia La-Force Mann said she was satisfied with Conroy’s performance in the game, as well as with the entire season. Conroy finished the game with seven assists and a career-high 11 rebounds.
“Jamie Conroy just seems to be the consistent effort, the consistent player for our program and she did a wonderful job of stepping up,” she said.
Sophomore forward Christine Huber, the newest addition to the Huskies, added her career best of 15 points and recorded five rebounds.
Since transferring from Rutgers University and debuting with the Huskies Dec. 19, Huber has averaged 9.5 points per game and 6.7 rebounds.
The Huskies battled the Tribe tooth-and-nail in the first half, but the W&M carried a slim 36-35 lead into halftime.
W&M guard Kaitlyn Mathieu hit five straight points late in the first half, and guard Taysha Pye added a lay-up to tie the game at 33-33. Huskies forward Jewel Tunstull scored to give NU the lead, but Mathieu struck again and hit another 3-pointer.
But Northeastern rallied in the second half and outscored W&M 34-20. The Huskies finished the game with 20 points off turnovers and recorded 13 steals.
However, NU wasn’t as fortunate against the University of Delaware and lost 61-51 at home Jan. 6.
Sophomore guard Deanna Kerkhof led the Huskies and scored 18 points. Conroy added 13 points and tied with Huber for a team high of five assists.
However, La-Force Mann’s squad was without one of their top scorers, Cannon, who averages 14.2 points per game.
“We didn’t have our weapons,” La-Force Mann said. “Kashaia Cannon was out and Christine Huber was just coming back from the flu and we were just down. We need to be at our A game to compete with teams like Delaware, and with our illness and people being out, it just wasn’t possible for us to compete at a consistent effort.”
The Blue Hens held a 29-23 lead going into the half and outscored the Huskies 32-28 in the second half, anchored by an 8-0 run to start the final stanza.
Delaware out-rebounded NU 39-26 and shot 43.6 percent from the field compared to the Huskies’ 39.9 percent.
Over the holiday break, Northeastern won only one game and lost three. The lone win was a 76-65 victory over Holy Cross Dec. 21, but they lost to Miami (OH) 77-61 Dec. 19, Boston College 80-67 Dec. 30 and James Madison University 84-61 Jan. 2.
“We played two Top 25 teams,” La Force-Mann said. “We were missing some players – Deanna Kerkhof and Christine Huber had both just gotten themselves involved in the offense. It was hard for us to get a flow and a consistent effort on both the offensive and defensive ends, and we didn’t have much time to get those players involved.”
The Huskies travel to Hempstead, N.Y., tonight to take on Hofstra University.
