Box Score

HARTFORD, Conn. – Catherine Lewis swears she's never hit a 3-pointer like that in her life. She had never hit a 3-point basket in the closing seconds to cut a lead to 60 points.

“Maybe six,” Lewis said with a laugh. “Not 60.”

But despite Lewis' late effort – and the ensuing hearty uproar that erupted from the Colgate bench and cheering section when the ball swished through the net – second-ranked Connecticut held on to defeat Colgate 101-41 here Wednesday night.

“Making that shot was a lot more exciting than I thought it would be,” said Lewis, who sank two of Colgate's seven treys and finished with eight points. “It was a lot of fun out here and a great experience.”

This unlikely contest between a national championship contender and a team picked for seventh in the Patriot League came about as a sort of sibling rivalry matchup between university presidents.

Colgate's Jeffrey Herbst and his sister, Connecticut's Susan Herbst, exchanged handshakes, traded jerseys and posed for pictures at center court before the opening tip along with Raiders head coach Nicci Hays Fort and the Huskies' Geno Auriemma.

Goals to Compete
But Hays Fort could have been excused for requesting some sort of presidential pardon from the rest of the evening after UConn raced to a 12-0 lead. Colgate might have entered the game as the nation's top-ranked free throw shooting team, but Connecticut was tops in several categories and those advantages played out all night long.

“We made a lot of mini-goals within the game and we wanted to compete every possession,” Hays Fort said of her game plan. “I don't want to say we competed every possession, but we competed in a lot of them.

“A lot of times, UConn's was better and they just made plays.”

Missy Repoli stopped the early Huskies run and put Colgate on the board with a jumper at the 17:01 mark. Jhazmine Lynch connected from 3-point range to make it 13-5 with 16:05 left, but that was the last time the Raiders saw a mere double-digit deficit.

The best thing about the game – especially the first half – was how well-played it was. Colgate was whistled for only nine fouls the entire night to Connecticut's eight, and the teams played from 12:07 on the first-half clock to 7:33 without a single whistle.

Connecticut raced to leads of 21-5, 28-9 and 41-18. Not even a Colgate defensive stand of 2 minutes and 40 seconds, from 6:14 to 3:34, made a difference because the Raiders went scoreless as well.

UConn led at the break, 49-22.

Tough All Around
The second half was more of the same as Colgate (2-4) tried to muster an offensive attack.

“Our post game was different,” said Lauren Kobiela, who scored six points and added four of Colgate's 10 assists. “We usually can feed it into the post a lot easier and our post players can usually do something with it. Tonight it was a lot harder, first to feed it in and then for them to finish.

“And they came off screens really well, making it was hard for any shooter to get a shot off. Those are big parts of our game.”

Forward Kelly Reid had one of the tougher assignments, trying to make her way down low against Connecticut's twin towers of Stefanie Dolson and Syracuse native Breanna Stewart.

The pair combined for 30 points and 15 rebounds, and Connecticut outscored Colgate 50-2 in the paint.

“UConn's definitely a really good team,” said Reid, who led the Raiders with five rebounds. “We knew it was going to be a challenge for our posts, defensively and offensively. But we worked a lot on practicing our fakes and our jump-hooks, and that's really going to help us in the Patriot League.”

Connecticut actually played better in the second half than the first, so Colgate's goal of keeping the Huskies under 100 points became an impossible task. UConn reached the century mark for the second time this season.

Over 40 Points
But Colgate earned a slight measure of achievement when Lewis' 3-pointer with five seconds left lifted the Raiders score to 41 – or better than three Connecticut opponents to date. UConn has defeated College of Charleston 103-39, Wake Forest 95-34 and Marist 81-39.

“We could have kept it under 100,” Hays Fort said. “But we had a lot of goals we accomplished and we did some little things very well. We wanted to win some possessions, and we probably did that.

“We wanted to get double-digit assists, we got that. We wanted to keep them under 20 points in transition, we did that. We wanted to keep our turnovers under 22, we did not do that.”

Colgate finished with 27 turnovers to Connecticut's seven.

Still, Colgate's entire roster did nothing but soak up the entire experience – both as a fan of basketball and as a student-athlete.

“It was awesome,” Kobiela said. “I played against some girls who are going to play in the WNBA and I got to meet Geno, which was amazing.

“But tonight also taught us how to take care of the ball against bigger and stronger girls. We won't face this type of player anymore this season but we'll be able to take the experience to the Patriot League and play really well.”

Reid agreed, saying, “It's awesome to play against the best of the best and, like Coach said, these are the girls who are going to be playing in March and we'll be watching them on TV.

“They'll probably be playing for a national championship, so it's great to say we came out and competed with them and fought to the end.”

Lynch led the Raiders in scoring with nine points, while Brianna Banks paced the Huskies (6-0) with 20. Connecticut shot 54.1 percent from the field to Colgate's 29.8, and won the rebound battle 42-26.

Colgate entered the game leading the nation in free-throw percentage at 83.9 percent, and the Raiders finished 6-of-8 at the line.

Colgate concludes a five-game road swing Saturday in a 1 p.m. start at Sacred Heart.