RHUL vs UCL

By Jo Svensson

After Sunday's crushing of UCL 2nds, Royal Holloway Lady Bears surely expected a vengeful 1st team to come to Nobles on Wednesday. As if our ladies needed any extra spark! UCL and Royal Holloway enjoy a long history of rivalry and given last season's five (!) defeats, Lady Bears had no plans on breaking their winning streak. Today was just another day. Final score: 71-65 to Holloway and, yet again, the voices echoed as UCL left Nobles with gloomy faces: "UC-WHAT?"

What a start of the game! As UCL were occupied missing free-throws, RHUL's Shanty Cheung and Alice Couten had the time of their life, scoring Holloway up to a 16-7 lead with help from Jocelyn Lau and Levke Rickmers. It was evident that UCL had lost many players from the previous season and found it difficult to merge together and play as a team. Which Royal Holloway did not mind; not at all. The second quarter proved more troublesome. Some misses in defence and a zone defence which needs to be worked on, RHUL fouled and fouled again and UCL shot themselves up to 31-27, still leaving Holloway in the lead.

Second half. The Ladies walked out of the changing rooms and looked -tired. This tiredness translated onto court and UCL took advantage, as you would expect, and a sloppy defence from Holloway led them once more repeatedly to the free-throw line to score. A number of unchallenged shots and the score was 48-46. The game promised a thrilling ending. "I'm going to have a heart attack if we continue like this," said coach Green afterwards. Quite understandable. With no more than 3 minutes left, the score was 65-63 to RHUL after a 3-pointed by a wide open UCL player. An impressive 6/8 free-throws made by Kristine Flyvholm, Jocelyn Lau and Alice Couten in the last minutes kept UCL at the distance of 6 points and determined the final result. Yet another excellent effort by Iv Hrstova, who had to step in as a core component of the zone defence when Levke Rickmers and Alice Couten both found themselves on four fouls.

Final score: 71-65 and RHUL Lady Bears are STILL undefeated in BUCS League 1A!

Scorers: Alice Couten 18, Shanty Cheung 17, Jocelyn Lau 16, Kristine Flyvholm 12, Luisa Miranda 2, Vicky Bright 1

Posted in: team,womens