Seton Hall Athletics
The Seton Hall women’s basketball team improved to 10-1 Thursday night with a 79-47 win over the 2-7 Fairfield Stags. With the win, the Pirates winning streak advanced to nine in a row, their longest streak since the 94-95 season.
Junior Tabatha Richardson-Smith, who was recently named Big East player of the week, led the Pirates with 19 points. Four of the five Pirate starters including Richardson-Smith finished in double figures. Bra'Shey Ali scored 11 points with a team-high eight boards, Janee Johnson finished with 10 points and six boards and Daisha Simmons finished with 14 points on 6-of-9 shooting, along with four assists in 24 minutes of action.
Richardson-Smith and Simmons earned a 20-6 Seton Hall run to end the first half. This resulted in the Pirates building a 13-point lead at the half after briefly falling behind 17-16 to the Stags near the midway point of the first half.
During the second half, Fairfield went almost six minutes without hitting a single field goal as Seton Hall managed to extend its lead to nearly 30 points.
The big second-half lead allowed for head coach Tony Bozzella to rest his starters, with none of them logging more than 28 minutes of playing time. The bench players proved themselves by outscoring Fairfield's reserves 18-2. This was the first time this season the Pirates won the bench scoring battle.
In the win, the Pirates shot 43.8 percent (7-for-16) from 3-point range and 52.4 percent (33-for-63) from the floor, just one one-hundredth of a percent shy of the season-high mark which was set during the Pirates first in-conference game against Creighton earlier this month.
The Pirates also had a big game when it came to rebounding. They finished plus-13 on the glass, their largest rebounding margin of the season, with three players earning at least seven boards.
The Pirates will be back in action Friday night against NJIT at Walsh Gym. Tip-off is set for 7:00 p.m.
Olivia Mulvihill can be reached at Olivia.Mulvihill@student.shu.edu or on twitter @OliviaMulvihill
