Turnovers bedevil Dolphins in last game

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It wasn’t supposed to go this way. Not after a sellout crowd at the Peter Jay Sharp Center came out for Senior Day. Not after fans paid their respects for a senior class that brought the College of Mount Saint Vincent Dolphins a championship in the 2013-2014 season.

But on Saturday afternoon, the Dolphins played a sloppy game, turning the ball over 27 times and it cost them in a 74-61 loss to the Farmingdale State Rams.

“I feel like today we really beat ourselves,” Christina Barone, one of the five seniors honored at the game, said. “We turned the ball over way too many times. We just have to take care of the ball.”

Despite the loss, the Dolphins clinched the fourth seed in the Skyline Conference Tournament and will get a chance for redemption, as they will host Farmingdale State again in the first round of the playoffs.

For interim head coach Brian Lavelle, the goal in the playoffs will be to limit the amount of turnovers.

“I’m hoping that the girls, because we have a very smart team, recognize that it wasn’t so much the opponent that beat us, but we beat ourselves,” Lavelle said.

The Dolphins struggled taking care of the ball from the onset, committing 11 turnovers in the first quarter. The Dolphins found themselves immediately in a hole, down 26-13 after the first period.

“I’m convinced that if we had cut the turnovers in half, we win the game by 10 points,” Lavelle said.

But turnovers didn’t just plague Mount Saint Vincent, they were a major issue for the Rams as well, who committed 26 of their own. The carelessness by the Rams allowed Mount Saint Vincent to hang in the game for most of the contest, trimming the Rams’ lead to as little as four points in the second quarter. But the difference-maker for the Rams was the three-ball.

Farmingdale State set the tone early, hitting five 3-pointers in the first quarter and burying 10 in the game. The Rams received timely buckets—almost always threes—that ended any significant runs the Dolphins went on. After Mount cut the Farmingdale lead to 38-34, the Rams knocked down a triple just before halftime to extend the lead back up to seven.

In the third quarter, after the Dolphins used a 9-2 run to cut the deficit to nine, the Rams once again converted on a three-pointer to settle things down. The Dolphins tried to make one final push in the fourth quarter, going on a 9-0 run to pull within seven points, but the Rams did what they did all game - control the pace and lock down defensively. Farmingdale State ended the game on a 12-6 run to seal the win.

“We can’t try to score 20 points all at once,” Barone said. “It has to be one at a time and we have to get stops on defense.”

The Dolphins will look to avenge their loss in the regular season finale when they face the Rams again, this time in the playoffs. The Dolphins suffered a first-round exit last season, but they head into the tournament with a championship pedigree, as several members of the team were a part of the championship squad in 2014. A championship this season would be a suitable parting gift to this senior class.

“They took this program to a new level,” Lavelle said. “They’re the ones that won a championship here, and they’ve started a tradition here at the college and hopefully it maintains itself as being a winning tradition.”

College of Mount Saint Vincent, Daniel Ynfante

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