By Eric Weiss

Senior Writer

The women’s basketball team began the season with a strong performance, defeating Rider 53-48 in their home opener.

““The game against Rider was an awesome start to the season,” Rachel Voss’ 13 said. “We were all so excited and it felt great to get our first win.”

The Bison had to fight back a late Rider rally to claim the victory. With 7:24 left as the score read 43-37 in favor of the Orange and Blue, but the game quickly took a turn for the worse as the home team missed the next five shots and had five turnovers over the next four and a half minutes. Rider eventually took a 44-43 lead.

But Joyce Novacek ’11, Lindsay Horbatuck ’13 and Voss would not let the Bison be defeated in their home opener. Novacek began the team’s resurgence, connecting on two free throws while Horbatuck and Voss followed suit with two layups. In the final moments of the game, Shelby Romine ’14 took the dagger to the Broncs as she buried two free throws with 53 seconds, putting the score at 51-44.

“After working so hard in the weight room, on the track and in the gym over the course of the preseason it was very exciting to win our first game,” Novacek said.

Romine, who scored 17 points in addition to five assists and two rebounds, was the leading scorer for the night. Romine scored the most points by a first-year in a season opener since 2003.

The Bison will have to try to clean up their number of turnovers in future games, as they had 24 over the course of this contest. Rider had 29 turnovers.

“One of our top goals on the season is to make one of the best turnarounds in the nation.  We are a different team this year and can’t wait to surprise more people,” Voss said.

The Bison will try to continue their resurgence as they tackle more teams in their packed regular season schedule, starting with a home game against Buffalo on Sunday at 2 p.m.