The Hofstra women’s basketball team’s strong defense wasn’t enough as they fell on the road to the University of Delaware Blue Hens on Sunday, Feb. 17, by a final score of 57-47. The Pride are now 7-18 overall and 1-12 in Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) play.

“I told the team right after that I was proud of their effort. It’s been a tough weekend” head coach Krista Kilburn-Steveskey said of the Pride’s losses to both Delaware and Drexel two days prior.

Leading the Pride against Delaware was junior forward Mikiyah Croskey who dropped a season-high 13 points on 6-of-8 shooting from the field while tallying seven rebounds. Junior guard Ana Hernandez Gil was right there with her, contributing 11 points and grabbing two rebounds.

Delaware opened up the scoring taking an early three-point lead, but Croskey went 4-for-4 in the first quarter as she and teammate Jaylen Hines helped the Pride quickly pull ahead. With 4:04 left in the quarter, the Blue Hens leading scorer Samone DeFreese tied the game at nine points with a layup. Delaware ended the first quarter in the lead, 18-15.

The second quarter saw little scoring from both teams as Hofstra’s defense forced the Blue Hens to shoot just 2-of-20 from the floor. After a four-minute scoring drought from both the Pride and the Blue Hens, a jump shot from JaKayla Brown brought the Pride within one point with 5:51 left in the quarter. However, a 6-0 run from Delaware, including four-straight free throws, quickly increased the Blue Hens lead to 28-19 going into halftime. 

“One thing I’m proud of was we bounced back [from the drought]. We didn’t let that grow into a huge gap” Kilburn-Steveskey said. 

Coming out of the locker room the Pride tried to close the point gap. After coming as close as eight points, they eventually trailed the Blue Hens by 15 after a three-pointer with 8:25 left in the quarter. Hernandez Gil responded with five points in a 7-0 run to help Hofstra make a comeback but the efforts weren’t enough as Delaware brought their lead back out to 13 points.

Following a second Hofstra 7-0 run with help from Brown, Hernandez Gil and Marianne Kalin, the Pride shrunk Delaware’s lead to just eight points at 55-47.

The last two minutes were very defensive for both teams as the Blue Hens added only two points to the scoreboard while Hofstra was held scoreless in the closing seconds of the 57-47 defeat. 

“We had every opportunity tonight to score. Everything we ran we had an option out of. We just need to keep going back to the drawing board and knock these shots down,” Kilburn-Steveskey said of the team’s shooting.

The Pride is currently on a six-game losing streak.  

“We are where we are in the standings. It’s painful and it hurts every one of them in there. We’re not this bad of a team,” Kilburn-Steveskey said.

Hofstra will return to the court in one week on Sunday, Feb. 24, to face Northeastern at the Cabot Athletic Center in Boston, Massachusetts at 2 p.m.