Late Rally Falls Short for Mason Women Against William & Mary

FAIRFAX, VA- After trailing throughout the entire game, a late run nearly helped George Mason comeback before falling to William & Mary 48-43 on Wednesday afternoon. The Patriots started very slowly out of the gates, falling behind 7-0 early, and didn’t get on the board for nearly 6 minutes to start. The Tribe shot 44% on the day, and used 67% shooting in the first quarter to build an early 17-7 lead. Sydney Wagner was the story of the day for the Tribe, dropping a career-high 27 points, including 18 points in the first half alone.

In the second quarter, W&M once again out-scored Mason early, building their largest lead of the game at 29-11 midway through the period on a deep Wagner three. The Patriots did respond however, ending the half on a 8-1 run to trim the halftime deficit to just 11, 30-19. Where William & Mary really was effective in the first half was in transition, forcing 11 George Mason turnovers, and turning that into 14 points off turnovers.

The third quarter was a offensive struggle for both Mason and William & Mary, as the two teams combined to make just five field goals, and scoring 7 points aside. The fourth quarter is where Mason finally seemed to find their stride, opening the period with a roaring 13-3 run, not only getting to within 10 points for the first time since the first quarter, they were able to cut the deficit down to just one point at 40-39 with 2:20 remaining.

🗣️ GOOD TAKE @TayyBabyy04 | #GetPatriotic pic.twitter.com/a3M053pnKb

— Mason Women’s Basketball (@MasonWBB) December 16, 2020

In fact, after Mason was down 29-11, the Patriots out-scored William & Mary 22-10, but unfortunately, it just wasn’t enough. As the game went down the stretch, Mason gave up a three to the one person they couldn’t let burn them…

1:24 4Q | W&M 43 Mason 39.
Who else? Sydney Wagner with a huge three for William & Mary. Patriots ball out of the timeout. #GetPatriotic #A10WBB

— Daniel Frank (@n1a2v3y4) December 16, 2020

That three by Wagner proved to be too much for Mason to overcome, and sealed their fate, falling 48-43.

For the game, George Mason shot just 28% and made just 1 three the entire afternoon, going 1/16. The Patriots also had some trouble from the foul line, going just 12/19 on the day.

After the game, Head Coach Nyla Milleson expressed frustration with the team’s performance. “I’m really just very very disappointed in our performance today,” said Milleson. “I know at the end of the day it’s just a basketball game and there’s so much going on in this world and there’s a lot more important things to worry about than a basketball game…but we’re better than we played today and we right now are just really struggling to have the ability to make changes and to basically take coaching and do what we need to do to win basketball games and it resulted in not a good outcome.”

On the slow start today, Milleson said “We’ve got to find a way to get off to a better start…at the end of the day we gotta make shot and we’re just really really really really struggling to make shots. Part of it is taking bad shots, part of it is a little bit of panic, part of it was their zone- it was ok. We just didn’t handle their zone very well.”

“Then coming down the stretch and we get to one point and the one thing you can’t do is give up a three to [Sydney Wagner].”

Looking ahead, George Mason welcomes in 5-0 Ole Miss on Saturday in a game that will be nationally televised on CBS Sports Network.

“We’ve got a whole different beast coming in here Saturday. They are big, they’re talented, they’re athletic. They’re turning people over 30+ times. They’ve got the number one transfer in the country [Shakira Austin] who used to play at Maryland. So obviously we’re going to have to be better to even have a chance.”