Photos and Game Summary: Spiders Have No Answers Against Elon

Official UofR Game Summary

 Richmond women’s basketball dropped a home contest to the visiting Elon Phoenix Thursday night at the Robins Center, 71-50. Sophomore Addie Budnik posted a career-high seven blocks and scored all nine of Richmond’s points in the fourth quarter as the Spiders fell to 1-2 on the year while Elon improved to a perfect 3-0.

“Pretty disappointing result and process tonight,” said head coach Aaron Roussell. “I felt good about the matchup. I knew Elon was a good team, and we went into it saying we had to control the boards. I thought we did a good job of that in the first quarter and really in the whole first half. I don’t think overall we made [Elon] feel very uncomfortable today, and we’ve got to address that. On the offensive end, it was a little frustrating. I thought we made a lot of the same mistakes and that’s obviously something we’ve got to address, and we’ve got to learn how to bounce back from that.”

Richmond kept things close early on, trailing by just one point at the end of the first quarter. After getting down 7-2, the Spiders fought back and Grace Townsend’s and-1 at the 5:10 mark evened things up at 9-9. She later tied things back up at 12-12 with another and-1. Budnik’s second-chance layup in the closing seconds of the frame made it 18-17 Elon after the first 10 minutes.

Elon began to pull away in the second quarter, but Kylee Lewandowski connected on a 3-pointer with 4:33 to go in the first half to cut Richmond’s deficit back down to two points at 26-24.

The Spiders came out firing in the third frame with a pair of treys in the first minute of the period. Kate Kilmkiewicz’s second triple of the quarter later cut Richmond’s deficit back down to single digits, but Elon pushed its lead back to 16 to close the frame and used an 11-0 run in the fourth to cruise to the win.

Notables

• Addie Budnik scored all nine of Richmond’s points in the fourth quarter on 4-of-4 shooting from the field to end up leading the Spiders in scoring with 15 points. Her seven blocks tonight surpassed her previous career-high most recently set in the season opener against Charlotte. She also led the Spiders on the glass with seven rebounds.
• Grace Townsend also scored in double-figures on the night with 13 points, one point shy of tying a career-high. She added six rebounds and a lair of steals to her stat line.
• Kate Klimkiewicz contributed eight points, breaking her nine-game double-digit scoring streak.
• Richmond shot 35.1 percent from the field, including 4-for-20 from beyond the arc.

The Spiders return to action on Sunday, Nov. 21 when they host UMBC at the Robins Center. Tip is set for 2 p.m.