Box Score
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BROOKLYN, N.Y. – It was a tale of two halves in the Steinberg Wellness Center Tuesday night, as the LIU Brooklyn women's basketball rallied back from a halftime deficit for the first time this season to beat Sacred Heart, 62-54. With the win, LIU improved to 5-16 overall, 3-7 in the Northeast Conference, while Sacred Heart fell to 10-11 overall, 7-3 in the NEC.
Senior Cleandra Roberts led all players with 21 points and 11 rebounds, while sophomore Sophie Bhasin sparked the second half surge, scoring all 18 of her points in the final 15 minutes of the game.
The first half saw a rough start for both teams, as the score was tied at just 9-9 six minutes into the game. But LIU was staying close with Sacred Heart up until that point. At 13:18, the Pioneers began to put together a run, however. SHU would outscore the Blackbirds 13-2 over the next five minutes, widening the lead up to 22-13 at 8:20. From that point on, LIU would match them shot for shot, but the gap was too big to make up, as the Blackbirds struggled to make shots. LIU shot just 29 percent from the field in the first stanza, including 15 percent from three-point range. Sacred Heart took the lead into halftime, 33-26.
A different LIU team came out of the locker room in the second half, and this Blackbird squad gave Sacred Heart trouble right from the start. Freshman Aleisha Myers hit a three pointer at 19:37 to cut the lead to four points, and this time, it was the Pioneers who would struggle to hit shots. Senior Cleandra Roberts hit back-to-back layups to give LIU a 7-0 run, and tying the game up at 33-33 with 16:18 to play.
Sacred Heart managed to make two shots in 30 seconds to widen the lead back up to four points, but then Sophie Bhasin caught fire. The sophomore hit her first field goal of the game at 14:19, making a layup off of junior Kelly Robinson's fast break pass. From there, she was unstoppable, hitting three straight three-pointers to go on an 11-0 run against SHU all on her own. She gave LIU the lead, 44-37, with 11:42 to play.
From there, Roberts picked up on the offensive onslaught, scoring six straight points for LIU, to make it 52-46 at 6:13. Bhasin hit another three at 4:09 to make it 55-47, and junior Letava Whippy gave the Blackbirds their biggest lead of the game, 57-47, when she had a jumper with 3:40 left on the clock. The Pioneers made a late run at the Blackbirds to try and take the game back, but Bhasin and Roberts went a combined 4-for-4 from the free throw line in the final 35 seconds to assure LIU the 62-54 victory.
Roberts had her sixth double-double of the season, leading all players with 21 points and 11 rebounds, shooting 6-for-9 from the field and 9-for-12 from the free throw line. Bhasin added 18 points and Myers had nine, while Whippy had six points and six rebounds, and Robinson led all players with six assists.
Up next, the Blackbirds host Mount St. Mary's, Saturday, February 8 at 2 p.m., in the team's annual Play 4 Kay game, which raises money for cancer research.