GORHAM, Maine – The Vermont State University Castleton women's basketball team concluded the 2023-24 season on Saturday afternoon, dropping a Little East Conference battle with Southern Maine, 69-53.
The Spartans wrap up the campaign with a 10-15 record overall and a 4-12 mark in LEC play, but return nearly all players next season with only
Elise Magro set to graduate. First-year head coach
Kathleen Payne helped the Spartans continue their streak of double-digit wins in a season, a mark that dates back to the 2001-02 season with the exclusion of the COVID-shortened year in 2020-21.
Magro concluded her career with a 16-point game on Saturday, giving her 450 points this season and 1,660 in her career. She finishes as the Spartans' second-leading scorer all-time, and holds two of the top-five scoring seasons in program history with 450 points this year and 485 points a season ago. She also ranks second all-time in made field goals, made free throws and steals, and ranks third all-time in career assists.
Other notables in the contest were
Maggie McKearin and
Emily Adams, each of whom dropped 11 points in the contest. Adams grabbed a team-leading nine rebounds and McKearin added seven boards.
Liz Bailey chipped in seven points and five rebounds and
Schuylar Nolan had five points off the bench.
For the Huskies, Vanessa Vaughan scored a game-high 20 points in just 18 minutes off the bench. Tamrah Gould added 12 points and Tara Flanders had 11. Amy Fleming led the team with eight rebounds.
USM raced out to a 5-0 lead, holding the Spartans scoreless for nearly three minutes before Adams scored a layup on a second-chance possession. The Spartans hung tight with the score 9-5, but the Huskies rattled off seven unanswered points from there to go ahead 16-5. Bailey and Magro hit shots for Castleton to cut it back to 16-9, but Southern Maine added three more to its lead going into the second quarter, 19-9.
The Spartan defense buckled down in the second quarter, keeping the Huskies off the board for more than five minutes. The offense chipped a few points off the lead in that time frame, making it 19-13 at the media timeout. Back-to-back threes by USM made it 27-14 a few minutes later, but Castleton continued to battle and sent it to halftime trailing by just 10 thanks to a late bucket by Magro.
Trailing 29-19 opening the third quarter, Bailey made it a single-digit game once more with a jumper on the first possession of the frame. The two sides traded scores from there, with Castleton slowly working the deficit back to just six points late in the quarter. A 6-0 run that saw McKearin hit 4-for-4 at the line with a Magro layup between the free throws cut it back to a 39-33 score. The Huskies responded with five in a row to make it an 11-point gap again, and USM went into the fourth quarter leading 46-35.
The lead grew to 55-36 for the Huskies before McKearin buried a three and Bailey added a layup for Castleton. A three-point play by Adams later in the frame followed by a pair of Magro free throws pulled the Spartans within 60-46, but the Huskies scored the next five points to cement their lead for good. The Spartans scored the final five points of the game, with Nolan hitting a jumper and Adams converting another three-point play to set the final at 69-53.
