Sparkill, N.Y. (11/10/17) The Lady Chargers basketball team began their 2017-2018 season with the ECC/CACC tournament. The Lady Chargers started their season against the Mavericks of Mercy College. Dominican is looking to build on their season last year where the Lady Chargers went all the way to the conference semi-finals against Caldwell University. Dominican was overmatched by the Cougars but went a long way and had a strong season.

The Mavericks started out strong and ended off the first quarter with an 8-point lead over the Lady Chargers. The Mavericks extended their lead to 15 points which was their largest lead of the game and it looked like the Mavericks would be in control the entire game. The Lady Chargers cut the deficit to eight points before the second quarter ended and the Mavericks had a 38-30 lead going into halftime. In the first half, Rebecca Rabeiro (Mildland, Park, NJ) recorded seven points and four assists while teammate Jasmine Gee (Englewood, NJ) also scored seven points and grabbed four rebounds. Behind them, Ciera Rivera (Pomona, NY) scored six points on 4 for 4 shooting from the free throw line.

Dominican started off slow out of the break and let the Mavericks continue to extend their lead. The Lady Chargers would close the gap to single digits in the third quarter but the Mavericks answered to give themselves a double-digit lead once again. The Lady Chargers would close the gap again and by the end of the third quarter the score was 55-47 Mavericks.

The Lady Chargers started the fourth quarter on a 6-0 run to cut the Maverick lead to two. Both teams went back and forth for the duration of the fourth quarter with the Lady Chargers tying the game at 68-68 with 1:20 left to go in the game. The Lady Chargers were down by as many as 15 points and came all the way back to tie the game late and with time running out it was anybody's game. The Mavericks scored the next four points and Gee scored with seven seconds left. The Maverick's Monet Keane-Dawes made one out of two free throws to give the Lady Chargers a chance on their last possession. With two seconds left, The Lady Chargers were able to inbound the ball for a three-point attempt at the buzzer that came up short as they fell to the Mavericks 73-70.

Rabeiro led all scorers with 17 total points in the loss along with nine assists and four rebounds. Rivera finished with 15 points while Gee added 14 points and nine rebounds.

The Lady Chargers will play game 2 of the ECC/CACC Challenge on Saturday at 3:00 PM against St. Thomas Aquinas College as they look to bounce back from their first loss of the season.