By Joe Pantorno, Sports Editor
Holding a 71-69 lead with 2.9 seconds remaining, a lay-up by Marist guard Casey Dulin as time expired was waived off by the referees as it came out of her hands just a little too late, to give the Pride its third straight victory and the New York Life Holiday Invitational championship.
“I’m just so proud of my team playing smart against a very good Marist team,” said Hofstra head coach Krista Kilburn-Steveskey. “I’m proud of them for being able to sustain and communicate and play a lot of defense tonight. I saw some good fun.”
“She’s always going to have three people on her,” said Kilburn-Steveskey. “She had three people on her often. It’s physical and it’s hard telling someone to stay in there and it takes restrain that I don’t even have to deal with offensively.”
In a team that lived and died by the three-pointer, Hofstra held Marist to just 8/27 shooting from beyond the arc. The Red Foxes did however make the necessary changes to the game plan to keep the Pride on its toes, especially finding chances under the basket.
“They hurt us down low towards the end,” said Kilburn-Steveskey. “That’s how they hurt up.”
After Dulin’s lay-up was waived off by officials, some confusion had Kilburn-Steveskey in uproar.
“It was strange because they had the [Marist] coach walk up to the monitor,” said Kilburn-Steveskey. “I have never seen that in 20 years of coaching. It was a very odd thing for me to look at from the game.”
Hofstra improves to 9-2 on the season and will next be in action after the holidays on December 29 against Princeton.