Back to .500; NYU-Poly Downs City College

Manhattan, N.Y. -  The NYU-Poly women's basketball team is back at .500 as they picked up a 54-48 non-conference win over City College of New York Monday night. Sophomore Kristin Leitheuser (Millbrook, NY) shot 6-of-12 from the field and paced all players with 16 points.

For the first 27 minutes of the contest, neither team enjoyed more than a seven point lead, as their were numerous lead changes. But, with 13 minutes to play and NYU-Poly leading by six, Leitheuser changed all of that. The 6'0" forward drained a pair of jump shots and a huge three-point in the span on three minutes to increase the Lady Jays lead from 35-29 to 41-29 and gave NYU-Poly a cushion it would need to preserve the win.

With seven minutes to play, Consuelo Aranda's (Calexico, Mexico) trifecta put NYU-Poly up by it's largest lead of the night 46-33. But, CCNY would not go quietly, as they went on a 12-4 run to narrow the NYU-Poly lead to 50-45 with 1:12 to play. Fortunately, for the Lady Jays a subpar performance from the line (4-for-8) in the final 72 seconds didn't come back to bite them, as CCNY was just 1-for-4 shooting and turned the ball over twice in the same period of time.

Sophomore Margaux Pickell (Howell, NJ) added 10 points and five boards to go along with quality performances from freshmen Shelby Bruns (Elko, NV) who picked up eight points and nine rebounds. Damei Mahama (Kearny, NJ) chipped eight points off the bench for NYU-Poly, which lost the battle of the boards 50-36. Ashley Straughn led CCNY with 13 points and a game-high 20 rebounds.

NYU-Poly is back in action Tuesday as they host the Sage Colleges as part of a double-header. The women kick-off at 6:00pm followed by the men's contest at 8:00pm.  Sage comes into the contest in 8th place at 2-4 in the conference, while NYU-Poly is in 6th place at 2-3.