Basketball loses lead, game

After one half Tuesday night against Notre Dame, the Pitt women’s basketball team couldn’t… After one half Tuesday night against Notre Dame, the Pitt women’s basketball team couldn’t have been in a better position.

It held a 10-point, 41-31, lead while shooting 55 percent from the floor in what head coach Agnus Berenato referred to as the team’s “best half of basketball.”

During halftime, however, the Fighting Irish woke up.

When the Pitt (18-9 overall, 9-7 Big East) lead reached 11 in the second half, Notre Dame opened up a 13-1 run until Cheron Taylor put the Panthers back on top one final time at 47-46.

A 6-0 spurt after gave Notre Dame (17-10, 8-8) the lead for good as they held on for a 72-65 win on Senior Night in South Bend.

“In the second half the crowd got into it,” Berenato told the South Bend Tribune. “You could see Notre Dame was really playing for something. This game shows how tough the Big East is.”

The Panthers’ offense fell far from its first-half production, shooting only 23.3 percent on 7-for-30 shooting.

Maddy Brown and Danielle Taylor each scored double figures off the bench with 13 and 10 points, respectively, while guard Mallorie Winn was limited to nine points on 3-of-11 shooting.

Marcedes Walker was the lone starter to reach the double-digit mark, posting her 12th double-double of the season with 12 points and 18 rebounds.

“Walker is a tremendous presence and determines what the defense can do,” Notre Dame head coach Muffet McGraw said in the South Bend Tribune. “She does change the game.”

The first half saw Pitt post a 15-point lead with 2:26 to play after Brown hit her first of two banked, 3-point shots.

Initially, the lead grew from a 13-2 Pitt run as the Panthers were as hot as it gets from the floor. They finished 16-for-29 from the field, including 4-for-5 from 3-point range and 5-for-5 at the free throw line.

The team also picked up an assist on each field goal in the half.

“I thought that first half of basketball, Pitt played really, really well,” Berenato said in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “All of a sudden, it looked like our crew went, like, shell-shocked.”

After falling behind in the second half of play, the Panthers cut the lead to one at 60-59 with five minutes to go.

During the final minutes, though, the Notre Dame defense held Pitt to only one field goal as the Fighting Irish shot 7 of 10 from the line down the stretch to put the game away.

Down seven at 72-65, Pitt’s defense allowed Notre Dame senior Megan Duffy to hold the ball for the final 22 seconds without fouling her.

“We’re behind seven,” Berenato explained in the South Bend Tribune. “Duffy shoots 90 percent at the line. We’re not going to score nine points in the last 15 seconds.”

Youngsters Lindsay Schrader and Charel Allen led the Irish to victory. Schrader notched 20 points and nine rebounds, while Allen – from nearby Monessen and recruited by Berenato at Pitt – added 16 of her own.

The loss knocked Pitt into a four-way tie for sixth place in the Big East standings. For the conference tournament held in Hartford, Conn., Pitt will receive the No. 6 seed and meet the 11th-seeded Cincinnati Bearcats, Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Hartford Civic Center.

A win over the Bearcats will pit the Panthers against DePaul in the second round on Sunday at 8 p.m.

For Pitt, a good showing in the tournament could propel it into the NCAA Tournament. Berenato, however, believes her team should already be heading in that direction.

“We’re 18-9 and we feel like we should go to the NCAA Tournament,” she told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.