PLEASANTVILLE, N.Y. (2/21/23) – The Franklin Pierce women's basketball team stumbled in their regular season finale at Pace University on Tuesday night, falling by a 73-54 final score in Northeast-10 action at the Goldstein Fitness Center.

With the loss, the Ravens finish the regular season with a 8-19 (4-16 NE10) record, with losses in four of their final five contests. Pace improves to 12-15 (9-11 NE10) with the win.

Through the first half of play, things did not go overly well for Pierce. By halftime, the Ravens found themselves trailing by 24 points, 44-20, following just 27% (3-of-11) shooting from the floor in the second quarter. Through the first 20-minutes of play, junior Ines Gimenez Monserrat (Mallorca, Spain) led the offensive production for Pierce with five points scored, while freshman Kenzie Sirowich (Seymour, Conn.) and junior Collete Mulderig (Scranton, Pa.) each notched four. Defensively, the Ravens struggled to contain the Setters' balanced attack, and found it especially hard to halt them from the perimeter, as Pace scored seven total three-pointers in the first half.

It took until the 5:06 mark of the second half before the Ravens saw their first successful conversion from behind the arc, coming off a shot by junior Gabriela Sanchez-Parodi (Canary Island, Spain). That one shot was part of a more balanced effort offensively in the third by the Ravens, where they eventually outscored the Setters by a 20-19 margin. However, it ultimately couldn't translate over to the defensive side, as the Setters continued to rain down points from three-range. Entering the fourth, the Setters had managed to maintain a 20-plus point lead on the Ravens at 63-40.

Pierce would once again outscore the host Setters in the final stanza, but would only manage to narrow the deficit by four points. Through the first five minutes, the Ravens would go on their largest run of the contest, 10-2, with five of the points belonging to Kenzie Sirowich. However, over the remaining portion of the game, the Setters' final two baskets would come from behind the arc, providing them the insurance needed to guarantee the win.  

Through the full 40-minutes played, the Ravens shot 21-of-54 (38.9%) from the floor, only securing the single three-point basket in the third quarter with 1-of-9 (11.1%) success from three-range. Leading the night was freshman Kenzie Sirowich, who came up just shy of the double-double with 14 points scored and nine rebounds, while juniors Ines Gimenez Monserrat and Ana Badosa Soler (Girona, Spain) each collected 11 points from the field.

Women's basketball will face off in the first round of the Northeast-10 Championship Tournament on Friday, February 24^th at 5^th-seeded University of New Haven, with an official start time yet to be announced. The Ravens enter the Tournament as the conference's 12^th-seeded team.