Moon Township, Pa. – The Robert Morris University women's basketball team ran into a red-hot shooting La Salle team en route to a 75-61 setback in its home opener at the Charles L. Sewall Center in Moon Township Wednesday night. The loss snaps a 13-game home win streak for the Colonials and drops their record to 2-4 on the season. La Salle has now won five straight games to improve to 5-2.
 
Anna Niki Stamolamprou paced RMU in scoring with 20 points. She was 7-of-13 from the field and hit a trio of three pointers. Janee Brown tacked on 12 points, knocking down 4-of-12 shots and going 4-of-6 from the charity stripe.
 
"I was very impressed with the way we battled right to the end," said 12th-year RMU head coach Sal Buscaglia. "La Salle played a very good game, shot the ball very well, and certainly we were undermanned with two starters out. That hurt us, but I still felt we had enough to win the game."
 
The Explorers were just too hot in the first half for RMU going 6-of-6 on three-pointers and shooting 60.0 percent (18-30) in the opening 20 minutes. La Salle finished the game 10-14 (71.4 percent) from long range. Alicia Cropper was 6-of-8 on three pointers and 7-of-11 overall while scoring a game best 22 points. Micahya Owens added 13 points, Siobhan Beslow chipped in with 11 and Jasmine Alston just missed out on a double-double with 10 points and nine rebounds.
 
"A lot of credit to La Salle. They couldn't miss in the first half, and didn't miss at all from three-point range in the first half and finished shooting 70 percent on three-pointers," said Buscaglia. "They did a great job."
 
"I thought our players played really hard, right to the end. We showed a lot of character. On the negative side, we lost the game. On the positive side, we showed our heart. We cut it to nine points with four minutes to go. If we hit a shot or get a stop we could have possibly put them on the ropes a little bit."
 
The Colonials hit six of their first seven shots, jumping out to a 15-11 lead in the game's opening four minutes. La Salle, however, matched RMU's hot start and then some.
 
The Explorers went on an 11-1 run over the next three minutes, starting the game 8-of-9. Back-to-back buckets by Brown cut the margin to two points, but La Salle finished the half on a 23-7 run to take a 45-27 lead at the break. While RMU cooled to hit 5-of-25 shots in the final 16 minutes, La Salle shot 60 percent in the half.
 
La Salle finally cooled off midway through the second half and Robert Morris took advantage. RMU went on a 17-4 run over an eight minute stretch as Stamolamprou and Rebeca Navarro scored seven points each. The run ended on a Navarro lay-in that cut a 22-point deficit to nine points, 64-55, with 4:31 to play.
 
La Salle had the final word, though, outscoring RMU 11-6 over the game's final four minutes. The surge gave the visiting squad the final margin of 75-61.
 
Robert Morris hits the road once again, traveling to Hempstead, N.Y., to take on the Hofstra Pride in a 2:00 p.m. game Saturday, Dec. 5.