Courageous Fight by the Firebirds in 71-62 Loss against Daemen.

WASHINGTON, DC – The University of the District of Columbia women's basketball team performed superbly but fell short to East Coast Conference challengers Daemen College 71-62 on Sunday afternoon at the UDC Sports Complex.

The Firebirds can take a lot of positives out of today's game after a tremendous effort to recover from a slow start in the 1st quarter, with the score ending 28-15. UDC was under a lot of pressure after the 1st quarter, when Daemen came out of the blocks at a rapid pace, but the Firebirds found composure to knock the Wildcats out of their stride. The District of Columbia (3-20, 1-12 ECC) played in what was an exciting contest against the Wildcats. With excellent defending, the Firebirds took advantage and restricted their opponents to only nine points in the 2nd quarter. UDC made the contest extremely close at the end of the 1st half by bringing the score to within seven points, 37-30. The 2nd half proved to be even tighter as both teams continued to pile on the pressure, and the Firebirds were led by an outstanding performance by junior guard Natasha Roy who hit a game-high 25 points, three rebounds, two assists, and two steals.

The District of Columbia played with plenty of confidence throughout the 2nd half when they kept up their inspiring effort, and were just four points behind Daemen at the end of the 3rd quarter with the score at 51-47. In the 4th quarter, the Wildcats fought through UDC pressure including two big shots in the final minutes of the game with junior guard Natasha Roy hitting a three-pointer and freshman guard Daeja Quick repeating shortly after. Despite the Firebird effort, the Wildcats managed to prevail 71-62 to maintain their winning record in ECC play.

A fantastic performance by the Firebirds included freshman guard Danielle Harrington with eight points and nine rebounds, freshman guard Daeja Quick with nine points and three assists, and freshman guard Dana Harrington adding nine points and three assists.

The Daemen Wildcats had impressive individual performances with freshman forward Caroline White seeing 18 points and eight rebounds, junior forward Erin Egan had 18 points and six rebounds, and senior guard Sarah Saba produced 15 points, five assists, and four rebounds.

UDC will be in action Wednesday, 7th February at 7pm at ECC opponent University of Bridgeport.