Despite junior guard Kashaia Cannon scoring 17 points and sophomore forward Rachael Pecota adding 15 points, the Huskies fell to Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) 79-58 Sunday.

“We didn’t start the game off the way we wanted to,” head coach Daynia La-Force Mann said. “Offensively, we were turning the ball over, taking poor shots. VCU could score, and did, when we weren’t effective with our boxing out.”

The Rams started out strong on a 10-0 run and closed out the half with a 43-22 lead.

In the second half, the Rams continued to bring the heat and the Huskies never came close to breaking into the deficit.

Northeastern gave up 19 points to the Rams on 15 turnovers, in addition to being out-rebounded 43-36.

“I don’t think we made that many turnovers, they were just able to capitalize on them,” Pecota said. “We need to value our possession more and try to realize a good shot from a better shot.”

On the floor, the Rams shot 45 percent, compared to the Huskies’ dismal 33 percent.

“We need to create better spacing for the drive, and offensively we were completely out of sync,” La-Force Mann said. “We weren’t patient with our shots and we need to take better shots.”

The Huskies wandered down the same path last Thursday, shooting a mediocre 18 percent (4-22) from the 3-point line as they lost to Hofstra 77-63.

“We had wide open shots at the three point line that we missed,” La-Force Mann said. “Kashaia did a nice job inside the zone, but we have to knock down those open shots.”

Junior guard Jamie Conroy led the team with 16 points, and Cannon added 11 points in addition to her four rebounds.

Sophomore guards Afreyea Tolbert and Deanna Kerkhof tallied 13 and 10 points, respectively.

Pecota put up six points while adding a career-high 15 rebounds but said she was unhappy with the team’s performance as a whole.

“We just weren’t hitting our shots,” she said. “We were a little bit too excited that game – we weren’t making shots we could normally make.”

The Huskies were also out-shot in the field, with the Pride putting up a percentage of 47.3, whereas Northeastern managed a mere 34.7 percent.

“We had so many field goal attempts,” La-Force Mann said. “We just didn’t value our possession, we didn’t make our layups. We had a lot of opportunities and we didn’t make the most of them and I thought that led us to a loss.”

La-Force Mann and the ailing Huskies look to turn things around when they travel to Atlanta tonight to take on Georgia State University.