Last March, Lehigh women’s basketball saw its Patriot League semifinal at Boston University canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
One year, and a lot of hard work later, the fourth-seeded Mountain Hawks find themselves headed back to the semifinals for a third straight season following a convincing 75-57 Patriot League quarterfinal win over visiting and fifth-seeded Holy Cross on Sunday afternoon.
“Resiliency would be the word that comes to mind [when thinking about the team],” Lehigh head coach Sue Troyan said. “Honestly, when you look back to last year, we were going up to Boston to play in a semifinal game and that got taken away from us. The kids this year have endured so much just to have a season with the testing and COVID protocols. It has not been an easy road, but the adversity they’ve faced through the last three or four months has prepared them well to get to this point.”
“This point” brings us to Sunday, when Lehigh held a 45-34 rebounding advantage and knocked down 13 3-pointers — a good combination, no matter the opponent.
“Holy Cross played a zone, so we had to be a threat in the middle to open up our game outside,” said junior Emma Grothaus, who scored a season-high 19 points while adding seven rebounds. “We learned throughout the game how to be a threat on the inside and also get our shots on the outside.”
A back-and-forth first quarter saw Lehigh end the period with a 7-0 run to take an 18-12 lead. The quarter ended with a Grothaus 3-pointer (she finished 2-of-3 from deep on the afternoon) and sophomore Frannie Hottinger layup (accounting for two of her 11 first-half points)
Leading 21-19 in the second quarter, the Mountain Hawks reeled off 11 straight points (all layups or 3-pointers) and 17 of the next 21 points to take a 38-23 halftime advantage.
An 8-0 Lehigh run early in the third quarter, capped off by a Mackenzie Kramer 3-pointer, put the Mountain Hawks ahead, 51-30. Holy Cross wouldn’t go away quietly, though, ending the quarter on a 14-1 run to pull to 52-44 heading to the fourth.
That’s as close as the Crusaders would come. The Mountain Hawks were resilient in their response, beginning the fourth on a 21-6 run to take their largest lead of the game, 73-50.
Along with Grothaus’ 19 points, freshman Jamie Behar scored a career-high 16 points. Hottinger finished with 14. Bronagh Power-Cassidy led Holy Cross with a game-high 26 points.
The pandemic may have taken away last year’s Patriot League semifinal, but the pause allowed the Lehigh coaching staff to install an offensive system that has led to the Mountain Hawks’ potent 3-point shooting attack; Lehigh entered the day fourth nationally in 3-pointers per game (10.2), a number that will go up after Sunday’s production.
“Given COVID, we had a lot of time to evaluate different systems within everything we were doing,” Troyan said. “We took this system from Drake and met with their coaches. One of the principles is that everybody has to be able to shoot the three. The system is really about taking open layups and shooting threes. We hunt layups, we hunt threes and we hunt assists.”
Now, the Mountain Hawks are hunting a Patriot League championship, with the next step coming Thursday in the semifinals at top-seeded Bucknell.
Justin LaFleur is a freelance writer for The Morning Call.
