The Oakland Golden Grizzlies women’s basketball team fell to the Robert Morris Colonials last Friday night, after an uncharacteristic disappointing offensive showing.

The first quarter would begin and the Colonials would immediately turn the ball over on their first possession, leading to a transition jumper and a lead for the Golden Grizzlies. The Colonials would answer back later with a basket of their own, and immediately the game would become a series of traded buckets. 

The first quarter would end with a Colonials lead, as the score would sit 20-17. The Golden Grizzlies would open up with a layup, which would deadlock the score 19-20 until both teams would score again around the sixth minute mark. 

The Colonials would keep their lead growing as the Golden Grizzlies would stumble, with the score before halftime sitting at 34-23. The Golden Grizzlies would only put up six points in the second quarter, going into the locker room with a puzzle to unlock on the offensive side of the ball. 

The Grizzlies would come out of the half with the proverbial offensive puzzle solved, starting to look ahead to chip into the Colonials’ lead and leave their abysmal second quarter performance behind them. 

With every push the Grizzlies would give, however, the Colonials would push them back even harder. This trading affair would continue on through the entire quarter, and the lead would not change hands as the quarter score would hang at 53-41.

The fourth and final quarter would leave no questions unanswered, with both teams scoring their highest amount of points here. Although they showed commendable effort in the final quarter to fight back against the lead, it would simply be too little too late as the Colonials refused to let go of the lead. 

The game would end with a win for the Colonials, with the score sitting at 71-65 by the time the final buzzer sounded. The Golden Grizzlies struggles from the three and the field were simply too much to overcome while the Colonials had a great shooting night. They would outshoot the Grizzlies from every spot on the court.

The Golden Grizzlies would shoot 43% from the field and 28% from the three point line, compared to the Colonials who would shoot 52% from the field and 41% from the three point area. Although the Grizzlies would draw more fouls than the Colonials, they would shoot a worse percentage from the charity stripe with a final percentage of 67% vs. 77% for Robert Morris. 

The Colonials would also win the rebounding battle with as narrow of a lead as one could possibly manage, grabbing 31 boards vs. the Golden Grizzlies’ 30 rebounds. The Colonials would also put up more than double the assists that the Grizzlies would, winning that battle 17-8. 

This loss drops the Golden Grizzlies to .500 on the season with a 9-9 record [8-4 in conference play] this season, while the Robert Morris Colonials improve to 7-10 [6-7 in conference play] with this win.

The Golden Grizzlies will return to the court on Feb. 4 against the IUPUI Jaguars at 7 p.m. in Indianapolis, Indiana.