Yellow Jackets to Meet Bridgewater for ODAC Crown

Box Score

SALEM, Va. --- Behind 28 points and 10 rebounds from Molly Ariail, the Randolph-Macon women's basketball team scored a 75-55 victory over Virginia Wesleyan College to advance to the championship game of the 2009 Old Dominion Athletic Conference Women's Basketball Tournament.

R-MC, which now stands at 22-5 on the season, will face fourth-seeded Bridgewater at 1:00 p.m. for the league championship an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

Ariail, who made 13-of-15 field goals, was joined by Katie Williams and Amanda Hiltunen who both had 10 points each in the victory.   Arial got help on the boards from Lindsay Riesbeck who pulled down eight rebounds to help R-MC to a 43-34 edge on the glass.

VWC finishes its season 18-9.  The Marlins were led by Brytanni Payton who had a team-high 11 points off the bench.  Andrea Ushinski andTonia Jones each had nine points in the loss as well.  

The Yellow Jackets defense held the Marlins to just 32.2% shooting from the floor on the afternoon, including 3-of-15 from three-point land.

The Yellow Jackets came out strong, going up 27-14 on an Arial lay-up with 7:44 to go in the half.  VWC closed the gap by scoring 13 of the final 18 points of the opening stanza to make the score 32-27 in favor of R-MC at intermission.

R-MC was able to maintain a lead in the early stages of the second half and were eventually push its advantage to 10 points when Hiltunen made the score 51-41 on a bucket with just over nine minutes to go in the game.

Randolph-Macon widened its lead to as many as 14 points, before Shawnee Lewis made a trifiecta for the Marlins that got them back in striking distance at 61-51 with 3:33 to play.

That would be as close as VWC would get as R-MC went on a 14-4 run to end the game to seal the victory and clinch its sixth appearance in the championship game in the last seven years.

This release is courtesy of Chris Kilcoyne, Randolph-Macon sports information.