GUNNISON, Colo. – The Regis University women's basketball team did not have lightning strike twice in its favor in its second game against Western Colorado this season as the Mountaineers dominated, handing the visiting Rangers a 73-57 loss at Paul Wright Gym on Friday.
 
How It Happened: With the Rangers at the wrong end of a 57-40 score with 9:19 to play in the final 10 minutes of regulation, Mountaineers junior guard/forward Payton Paro sank a layup to give Western Colorado a 59-40 lead, which proved too big to overcome for Regis.
 
WCU eventually led by as many as 21 on four occasions in the fourth quarter. The last of those occurrences came with 1:28 before the buzzer when redshirt freshman guard Phylicia Bacon made a jumper to bring the Mountaineers to a 71-50 lead.
 
RU then answered with a 7-0 run, kicking off with junior forward Grace O'Neill's trey with 1:10 to go in the contest and concluding after junior forward Whitney Jacob's successful free-throw line trip. Jacob's pair of free throws cut the deficit to 71-57 with 42 seconds left in the game.
 
Western Colorado junior guard/forward Anna Weibel's layup with 30 seconds left on the clock transitioned the game to its final result, extending WCU's advantage to 16.
 
The Rangers trailed the Mountaineers by a lot early. In fact, Western Colorado opened the game with a 9-0 run that started when junior guard/forward Jessie Erickson broke the scoreless tie with a jumper just 1:04 into the contest for a 2-0 lead. Erickson capped the run with a layup at the 7:23 mark of the first.
 
Junior guard Tashika Burrell finally ended the shutout, 9-2, on a layup with 6:38 to go in the first quarter.
 
Further down the opening 10 minutes, Regis assembled a 7-0 run, which took form on a jumper from freshman forward Sydney Speights at the 3:16 mark of the first and stopped after O'Neill's layup with 2:17 remaining in the first. O'Neill's layup brought RU within a trey of WCU, 16-13.
 
Burrell kept the Rangers within a 3-pointer, 21-18, when she hit a jumper with only 1 second on the clock in the first.
 
After freshman guard Morgan R. Smith cut Regis's deficit to one, 21-20, only 7 seconds into the second quarter, the Mountaineers awoke from their offensive hiatus with a 6-0 run. Freshman guard Hannah Cooper's layup was responsible for starting it with 7:55 left in the first half, and junior forward Katie Dalton rounded it off with her free throw at the 6:45 mark. Dalton's point from the charity stripe grew Western Colorado's lead to 27-20.
 
Following Jacob's jumper, which shrank the RU deficit to four, 36-32, WCU closed out the second quarter by doubling its lead. These four points consisted of junior guard Samantha Coleman's jumper with 1:10 to go in the first half and Cooper's pair of free throws. Cooper's free throws occurred 41 seconds before halftime and gave the Mountaineers a 40-32 advantage at the intermission. 
 
The four points eventually proved to be the start of a 10-0 run for Western Colorado. Sophomore guard Taytem Coleman put up the second half's first points with two free throws at the 9:25 mark of the third, while junior forward Jadyn Kanzler's layup moved WCU to its largest advantage yet, a 14-point, 46-32 lead, with 7:50 remaining in the third.
 
A 6-0 run of back-to-back treys transpired for the Mountaineers later on in the third, which were made by Taytem Coleman at the 6:52 mark and Cooper at the 5:50 clock reading. Cooper's 3-pointer made the score, 52-35.
 
Burrell contributed the third quarter's final points with a pair of free throws to reduce the Rangers' deficit to 57-40 with 22 seconds left. 
 
Game Notes: Jacob led Regis with a game-high 19 points to go along with four rebounds, a game-high four assists, a share of the game-high three blocks, and a share of the team-high one steal. O'Neill turned in a night of 16 points, a team-high five rebounds, one assist, and two blocks. Burrell finished with nine points, three rebounds, one assist, and a share of the team-high one steal. Freshman guard Sydney Daniels, Speights, junior guard Emma Sterkel, Smith, and senior forward Jaz'Myne Snipes all matched Jacob and Burrell for the team-high one steal. 
 
Though RU matched Western Colorado in 3-pointers made, with five, WCU made five more from the paint. The Mountaineers outshot the Rangers from the paint by a 26-21 margin. Western Colorado made 26 of 48 (54.2 percent) from the paint, while Regis only managed to hit 21 of 59 (35.6 percent) attempts from the same area.
 
Up Next for the Rangers: RU drops to a 10-14 record overall and an 8-10 record in Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference (RMAC) play. The Rangers will bookend their weekend road trip at No. 19 Colorado Mesa (21-3, 17-1 RMAC) on Saturday at 5:30 p.m. The game will be held at Brownson Arena.