Rutgers women's basketball uses 4th-quarter redemption to defeat Cornell in 2nd game of season
The Rutgers women's basketball team defeated Cornell at Jersey Mike's Arena on Livingston Campus on Thursday. The Scarlet Knights' (2-0, 0-0) leading scorer from last season sealed the deal with a barrage of scoring in the fourth quarter against the Big Red (1-1, 0-0).
They say college basketball is a game of runs, and that was certainly the case in the opening quarter, with Cornell going on a 9-2 run early, followed by 10 consecutive points from Rutgers.
From there, it was sloppy back-and-forth basketball for both teams. The Knights' star duo, consisting of senior guard and forward Destiny Adams and freshman guard Kiyomi McMiller, combined for a rough 2-9 shooting from field goal range in the first quarter.
McMiller missed most of the season debut on Monday after being poked in the eye and may not have been 100 percent healthy tonight. Even with McMiller finishing a rough 4-19 tonight, it's evident how important she is to the flow of the offense with her silky smooth handles and great vision. The freshman phenom will be more than just fine.
The offense opened up for both sides in the second quarter, as each squad scored an efficient 19 points to leave things tied heading into halftime.
Big Red's Emily Pape torched Rutgers in the first half with 16 points, adding another 11 in the second. Pape knocked down Cornell's only 3-point bucket of the game out of nine attempts, one of the biggest reasons Big Red couldn't put the Knights away for good.
The most head-scratching part of the first half for Rutgers was the lack of graduate student center Chyna Cornwell. After exploding for a 21-point, 15-rebound double-double all in 36 minutes in the season opener against Manhattan on Monday, Cornwell saw just 10 minutes of work in the first half and 19 minutes overall. Nonetheless, she was still productive with 9 points and 11 rebounds, but it is clear this team is better when she's on the court.
Cornell continued to play in lockstep with the Knights, dominating the paint and drawing contact on seemingly every offensive possession. It racked up a whopping 36 points in the paint throughout the second and third quarters on the way to a 52-47 lead heading into the final 10 minutes.
In the fourth quarter, destiny took over, with Adams at the forefront of a 13-0 run that would take up more than 4 minutes of the quarter.
Adams would explode for 14 fourth-quarter points on perfect shooting to put her total at 30 for the night. She would be the difference maker in the 11-point victory.
"Destiny is just such a great player that if she gets enough opportunities she's going to come through," head coach Coquese Washington said after the game.
After several quick and predictable possessions up and down the floor that plagued the offense in the first three quarters, Rutgers would use its tenacious defensive effort to lead to easy buckets in transition. Rather than playing as just one or two players on a drive, it was played as a team in the fourth quarter, allowing the Knights to run away with this one.
"The message in that last huddle was this is going to be our quarter," Washington said. "We're going to finish the game strong, and that’s what we did."
Rutgers will be back for another game on home court on Sunday when it faces off with NJIT. Tip-off is scheduled for 2 p.m. and the game will be broadcast on Big Ten Plus as well as 88.7 WRSU-FM.
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