The women’s basketball team added a win and a loss to their season after a pair of games last week, to start the season at an overall 3-1—a significant improvement over last season’s 1-3 start.

On Wednesday, the team traveled to Bristol, R.I., where they came away with a hard-fought two-point win against Roger Williams University. On Saturday, the Judges again went on the road and fell to fourth-ranked Tufts University.

Both teams headed into Saturday’s game undefeated, but the Jumbos managed to take control of the game in the second half and avoid the upset,  dropping Brandeis to 3-1 overall. 

The Judges started the game playing stifling defense, something they have relied heavily on early in the season. Brandeis held an early 11-10 lead with 12:12 to go in the first half, but Tufts took the lead back less than a minute later on an 8-0 run over the span of two minutes. The Judges buckled down on defense for the rest of the half and went into halftime only down by four points in a low-scoring 27-23 contest. 

Trailing 31-27 with 18:23 left in the game, the Judges started to fall behind as the Jumbos put together a 14-4 run behind an efficient offense. The Judges never managed to cut the gap to below nine points the rest of the way, getting outscored 47-28 in the second half. 

Guard Niki Laskaris ’16, who led the team in scoring with 15 points, put the onus on the defense to perform better. “Our offense was ineffective in the second part of the second half because our defense was not as strong as it normally is,” she said. 

“Our best weapon is our defense, and when we do not get stops, it makes offense a little slow,” she continued.

Center Olivia Shaw ’18 added nine points on 3-of-5 shooting from the field, as the Judges lost 74-51 to the host Jumbos.

On Wednesday, Brandeis came back from a nine-point deficit in the last five minutes of the game to take down Roger Williams by a slim two-point margin.

 With just over 10 minutes left in the first half, Brandeis led the Hawks 19-13 behind timely three-point shooting from Laskaris and guard Frankie Pinto ’17. The Judges’ defense then started to ease up and allowed the Hawks to take the lead on a 24-9 run to close the half. 

The Judges took a 46-44 lead with 14:42 left in the game behind strong inside scoring from Shaw and forward Tori Dobson ’16. After taking the lead, the Judges went cold for nine minutes and let the Hawks’ lead grow to nine with 5:54 left in the game. 

Brandeis converted at the line six times over the next minute and a half of game time and eventually took the lead on a Laskaris three-pointer that made the score 69-68 with 2:56 left in the game. After a pair of jump shots from both teams, Hawks’ freshman forward Mariah Nicholas made a free throw to tie the game at 71-71. 

Coming out of a time-out with 36 seconds left in the game, Laskaris missed a shot from three, only to have guard Sydney Sodine ’17 grab the offensive board and put in the winning bucket with 16 seconds left.

Despite the way in which the game ended, Laskaris still sees controlling the glass as a major point of emphasis for the team going forward. 

“[Our] rebounding is definitely something that we want to improve on. We are all athletic enough to get rebounds, but against teams who crash hard we need to do a better job boxing out,” she said.

Laskaris is also excited for the team’s prospects for the rest of the season, commenting, “I love this team's style of play, dedication and work ethic.”

The squad will look to rebound from the loss against Tufts when they host Emmanuel College tonight at 6 p.m. before taking an extended break for Thanksgiving.