The women’s basketball team went undefeated in last week’s games against Cazenovia on Tuesday, William Smith on Friday, and Hamilton on Saturday. After winning five games in a row, the Red Hawks have climbed to second place in the ECAC conference standings.
Tuesday’s non-conference game at Cazenovia proved to be a good preview for the following weekend’s games. Rensselaer easily shut down the Wildcats in 63-45 victory with sophomores Jacqueline Ferrari and Kristin Kaczynski leading the team by scoring 14 and 13 points, respectively. Senior co-captain Holly Neiweem added another 10 points.
With two wins in a row going into Friday’s game against William Smith, the Red Hawks felt strong going into the game and their confidence showed on the court as they crushed William Smith 81-47. The highlight of Friday’s game was Neiweem, who hit five three-point shots to score a total of 18 points and became the eighth player in RPI’s history to reach 1,000 career points. The game was stopped when Neiweem hit her first shot of the game, a three that took her over the 1,000-point mark. She was presented with the game ball as teammate Karen Wood read a statement detailing Neiweem’s achievements in four years with the program.
Neiweem’s shot gave RPI a 5-2 lead, and the Herons never again caught the Red Hawks. William Smith could get nothing to fall while the home team scored on most of its trips down the court. Rensselaer quickly built up a double-digit lead on the conference’s second-place team and continued to steadily throughout the game.
Neiweem called the game “a substantial victory that hasn’t occurred in recent years against William Smith—[they’re] traditionally a strong team.”
Rensselaer continued its winning streak on Sunday against Hamilton by defeating them by 10 points in a 75-65 victory. Kaczynski and Neiweem led the team in scoring while the entire team hit 81.3 percent of their free throw attempts to advance their overall record to 15-6 overall and 8-3 in the conference. On Tuesday night, RPI won its fifth game in a row with an 81-78 overtime victory at Vassar; Kaczynski, the team’s leading scorer, had another team-high with 21 points.
RPI closes out its regular season with home matches against Union and Skidmore this weekend. The Red Hawks are currently in second place with a 9-3 conference record and have clinched an appearance in the UCAA tournament, which will take place on February 22-23. The winner of the conference tournament receives an automatic bid to the national Division-III tournament. The Red Hawks are the defending UCAA champions—they lost to Mount Saint Mary in the first round of the NCAA tournament in 2001.
