HACKENSACK, N.J. ? The Monmouth University women's basketball team dropped a 75-54 decision to Fairleigh Dickinson in Northeast Conference action on Monday evening at the Stratis Arena in the "Garden State Rivalry Series." The loss, Monmouth's sixth in a row, drops their record to 7-18 and 4-10 in the NEC, while FDU improves to 10-15 and 6-8 in the league.
The Knights jumped out to a 9-7 lead in the early going as Mercedez Walker knocked down a pair of free throws and scored on a putback at the 17:35 mark of the first half. FDU's first half lead inflated to 21-13 with 11:11 left in the first half after a steal and end-to-end lay in by Freehold, N.J. native Alyssa Mayrose.
FDU pushed their lead to 25-13 before Jennifer Bender (Staten Island, N.Y./Staten Island Tech) grabbed a Brianne Edwards (Bloomfield, Conn./Suffield) miss and connected on a basket to cut the Knight's lead to 10 points with 8:26 left in the first half. Fairleigh Dickinson increased their lead to 36-22 with just over two minutes left in the first half after a Walkling bucket. The Knights took a 39-24 lead into the half, led by Christy Altamirano's 11 points. Bender led Monmouth with six points and seven rebounds, as LaKia Barber (Clinton, Md./Gwynn Park) added six points as well. The Hawks shot 34.5 % from the floor and committed 12 turnovers in the first 20 minutes, compared to 38.2 % for the Knights and five turnovers.
The Hawks cut the FDU lead to 47-40 at the 12:40 point of the second half following a Barber traditional three-point play and after the Hawks forced an errant FDU shot, Barber converted a putback on their following possession to trim the Knight's lead to seven.
FDU doubled their lead to 58-44 with just less than eight minutes to go in the contest paced by a Shanay Freeman three-pointer from the top of the key with 9:25 left in second half.
The Knights held the Hawks to 12 points in the game's final 10 minutes to ice the league win.
Barber paced the Hawks with a career-high tying 19 points, while Bender narrowly missed out on her ninth double-double of the season with nine points and 13 rebounds.
Monmouth returns to action on Saturday, February 23 when they host Long Island at 3:00 p.m.
