As she was looking over the box score immediately following the conclusion of Sunday afternoon's 77-49 win over Penn State-Berks, Katie Marcella, Keuka College's interim women's basketball coach, smiled when she came to the rebounding portion of the stat sheet.
Facing Berks, the Storm (6-1, 3-0 North Eastern Athletic Conference) enjoyed a 58-31 edge on the glass as Keuka set a season-high for rebounds in a game, besting the old mark of 51 boards during a Dec. 7 road win over Morrisville State.
Sophomore Danielle Gravel (Sidney, NY/Sidney) scored a game-high 15 points while making 60 percent of her shots, and classmates Jessica Bandrowski (Center Moriches, NY/Center Moriches) and Casey Chamberlain (Perry, NY/Perry) added 14 and 11 points respectively as the Storm won its fifth straight contest.
"We have a lot of weapons on offense and we were patient," Marcella said. "Being patient with the ball, working the ball three, four, five passes, it's guaranteed to get somebody open at some point."
Chamberlain, who had scored 13 points during Keuka's first five games, set a career-high in scoring and added six rebounds while sophomore Taylor Szwec (Candor, NY/Candor) added eight rebounds and five points for Keuka, which collected 22 offensive and 36 defensive rebounds.
Senior Morgan Engelbert (Elmira, NY/Thomas Edison), junior Stephanie Strassner (Rochester, NY/Bishop Kearney) and freshman Amanda Kubitz (Spencerport, NY/E.J. Wilson) all grabbed seven rebounds for the Storm, which raced to a 42-27 halftime lead after shooting 17-for-36 (47.2 percent). Junior Mariah Mouzon (Elmira, NY/Elmira Free Academy) chipped in with seven points and three rebounds for Keuka.
The Storm started fast and led 16-4 after Chamberlain buried a '3' just 4:46 into the game. A layup from Engelbert gave Keuka a 21-7 lead, and the advantage never dipped below eight points for the rest of the game. Freshman Erica Pendrak (Utica, NY/New York Mills) drained a '3' with 3:06 left in the first half to give Keuka a 40-20 edge, but Penn State-Berks (2-8, 1-3 NEAC) used a 7-0 run to trim the lead to 13.
Gravel scored five points, Chamberlain added baskets on consecutive possessions and Bandrowski nailed a '3' during a 12-2 run as the Storm pushed its lead to 54-31 with 17:04 to play. A jumper from freshman Missy Keem (Silver Creek, NY/Silver Creek) gave Keuka its largest edge at 73-41. The Storm shot 47.8 percent on three-pointers (11-for-23), as Gravel and Bandrowski each went 3-for-5 for Keuka, which limited Berks to 29.8 percent shooting for the game (17-for-57), including 7.1 percent on three-pointers (1-for-14).
Kaelin Reed scored nine points while Shakiyla Stone and Channell Jones each added eight points apiece for Berks.
"Our goal was to come out hard with our full-court man (defense) and then get back and play good defense," Marcella said. "We knew they weren't a great outside shooting team coming into the game so we knew if we could put some pressure on them and then back off in the half court, we knew we could be successful."
Keuka returns to action with a 6 p.m. home game against perennial power SUNY Geneseo on Tuesday night. The Storm then hit the road for a pair of NEAC contests, taking on Gallaudet at 4 p.m. Saturday afternoon before facing Penn State-Harrisburg at 2 p.m. on Sunday.
The non-conference game with Geneseo (6-4, 2-2 SUNYAC) will provide a great challenge for a relatively young Keuka that features only one senior (Engelbert) and two juniors (Strassner and Mouzon) among the 12-person roster.
Geneseo returns two starters from the 2010-11 season, when the Blue Knights went 26-4 and won its first-round NCAA Division III tournament game before falling to Babson (Mass.) in the second round.
"The confidence (of this team) is obviously up, but a lot of the players here, the freshmen and the sophomores, really haven't seen competition like they're going to see on Tuesday, except for the NCAA game that we played," Marcella said when asked to look ahead to Tuesday night's game.
"We're looking forward to playing Geneseo, it's a good test for us to see where we're at."