Nashville, TN — After taking a tough loss in the opening game of the Music City Classic a day prior, the State University of New York at New Paltz rebounded with a tough defensive performance that led the way to a gritty 54-40 win over Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (IN) Monday.
 
"Definitely coming off a hard loss against Simpson yesterday has driven us to play better defense," said Hawks senior forward Maddie Van Pelt. "We had really poor defense yesterday, so today that was something that we really focused on and I think we turned them over 30-plus times, which helped us in our favor."
 
SUNY New Paltz struggled to find its shooting touch early in the game, but swarmed on the defensive end to force turnovers on numerous possessions, allowing the Hawks to get out and run the floor for easy lay-ups in transition. They scored 21 points off 32 Fightin' Engineer turnovers with 26 points coming in the paint. 
 
 
SUNY New Paltz jumped out to an early lead to open up the game and never let Rose-Hulman gain a lead. After taking a 14-6 advantage after the first quarter, the Fightin' Engineers cut the deficit to three midway through the second. Following a trip to the foul line by the opposition, the Hawks called a timeout to re-group and answered with a 10-0 run.
 
Van Pelt got the unanswered stretch started, earning an and-one after a tough finish at the rim. Nicole Ziogas added on at the foul line, and on the ensuing possession Paige Niemeyer earned one of her career-high six steals to get the ball back for her team. She quickly pushed the ball up to Marion Dietz who made a nice pass back to Niemeyer running the floor for a quick two points. Cassidy Deaver then put the finishing touches on the run, hustling out to collect a loose ball at half court and laying in a fast-break bucket in the final minute to put the Hawks up 29-16 at the break.
  "Before the game we talked about relentlessness and how there is no scouting report for relentless, so no matter what we do and no matter how much they know we're going to do it, if we have a relentless mindset, a relentless attitude and a relentless effort then it will work," said SUNY New Paltz coach Jamie Seward. "I thought we started the game like that, but then when we struggled shooting the ball I think we went through a phase there in the middle portion of the first half where we stopped being as relentless, stopped getting after it defensively with our rotations, and fouled and gave them an opportunity to get some easy points from the foul line."

The Hawks slipped into early foul trouble to start the third quarter and the extra opportunities at the charity stripe allowed the Fightin' Engineers to climb back closer to the lead. They shot 6-for-6 from the line, which totaled half of their points in the period to trim the deficit to 33-28 entering the fourth.
 
Despite a frustrating third period, SUNY New Paltz never seemed deterred and made sure to close out in the fourth. Dietz opened up the quarter with a made 3 off an assist from Maddie Gillis and with starters Niemeyer and Philesha Teape in early foul trouble, the Hawks got quality minutes from a variety of players off the bench including Gillis, Olivia Badura, Deaver and Nicole Ziogas, along with Graci Serravillo who earned her first start of her career on the night.

Following another made shot from the perimeter by Dietz, Serravillo earned a trip to the foul line and made both attempts to push the advantage to 14. Rose-Hulman answered with a 3-pointer, but Van Pelt countered right back with her own made bucket from behind the arc. Badura added on after going coast-to-coast following a defensive board, finishing on the other end to pad her team's cushion back to 14 with about four minutes remaining.
 
"Overall it was a really, really ugly performance and I said to the players after the game, I'm not happy with the way we played, but I'm happy with the way we won," Seward said. "I thought some of those guys played really well in the second half. I thought that Olivia, and Maddie [Gillis] and Cassidy, Graci and Nicole showed some mental toughness and discipline to go along with that to play through the way the game was going both from an offensive standpoint when we struggled to get anything going and also the way the game was being officiated. Being able to adjust to that and play through that, I think it showed some toughness that — I don't necessarily know that we want to happen, but it is nice to know that we have that if it is necessary."
 
Rose-Hulman never got closer than 12 down the stretch, as the Hawks continued to force the Fightin' Engineers into costly turnovers that ultimately helped seal the win. SUNY New Paltz finished just 28 percent from the floor, including 12.5 percent from 3-point range, but won the turnover battle 32-13 after setting a season-high for caused turnovers, while also tying a season-most in steals with 15.  
"It is nice to know that you can show some grit and have some toughness to win a game when really everything is stacked up against you," Seward added. "We shot 4-for-32 from 3. It seemed like the whistle was really strongly going against us all game, particularly in that third quarter and our players were disciplined enough and tough enough to be able to play through all of that and still be able to make enough plays to be able to get a win."
  
Niemeyer led the way on the defensive end, finishing with a team- and career-high six steals. The senior padded the stat sheet despite fighting early foul trouble, as she added eight points, five rebounds and a career-high five blocks, which also tied for the sixth-most in program history.
 
"Paige is our backbone on both sides of the floor, every aspect of the game. She really does everything," said Seward. "She defends on the ball, off the ball, she rebounds, she passes the ball, she handles the ball, she initiates offense, she finishes on offense. She really is the focal point in everything that we do. Let's say 80-90 percent of everything we do revolves around Paige and her ability to do so many different things and know how to get people into positions... the style and the versatility is almost understated, because it is such a wide range of versatility. It is beyond versatile, the kind of player that she is."

Van Pelt, meanwhile, recorded her second career double-double after finishing with a team-high 16 points and a career-high 13 rebounds with five of her boards coming on the offensive end. She shot 6-for-13 on the day and also added three steals to her stat line. Through eight games Van Pelt is averaging a career-high in points per game (12.6) and is just shy in reaching her career-high in rebounds per game (6.4), while leading her team in scoring for the third time this season. 
 
"I've said that before, but that is the player Maddie Van Pelt is," Seward said. "She is maybe showing some things in her game offensively that she hasn't necessarily shown and worked really hard to expand her game and put those things into her game, but she is one of our best players out there. I feel as comfortable with Maddie handling the ball, taking a shot, taking the ball to the basket as anyone on our team. Maddie is as good as any player that we have and some of the numbers are backing that up in the last couple games. I don't think it is a surprise anymore, I think it is the player that she is now."
 
The win puts the Hawks at 6-2 overall on the season, while Rose-Hulman drops to 1-9 on the year. SUNY New Paltz is back home for its next contest, hosting Alfred University in the Hawk Center Jan. 7 for a 4 p.m. game.
 
"I think winning today's game will help us in January for a momentum-changer versing Alfred and then going into SUNYAC play," Van Pelt added. "We definitely want to do what we did last year and have a strong finishing performance and we just want to play the best basketball we can in March."

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