WAYNESBURG, Pa. (Dec. 2) – Led by a 30-point effort from senior guard Emily Cavacini, the Saint Vincent women's basketball team earned a 69-60 road win over Waynesburg University in Presidents' Athletic Conference action at the Rudy Marisa Fieldhouse.
 
The Bearcats (4-3, 3-1 PAC) used a decisive second quarter and a stifling defense to hold off Waynesburg (0-7, 0-4 PAC) and improve to 15-1 against the Yellow Jackets dating to the 2015-16 campaign.
 
The 30 points tied a career-high for Cavacini, who went 14-for-21 from the field, while teammate Madison Weber recorded her second double-double of the season with 10 points and a game-high 12 rebounds. Emily Thompson scored nine points, including a 2-for-2 showing from behind the arc, while Lizzie Bender scored eight points and grabbed five rebounds and Bethany Smith posted career-highs of five points and six boards.
 
Defensively, Saint Vincent limited Waynesburg to just 28 percent (22-for-77) from the field while blocking eight shots, with three from Weber and two from Makenna Maier.
 
The teams would trade the lead in a back-and-forth first quarter. After the Yellow Jackets scored on their first two trips to open up a 5-2 lead in the opening minute, Thompson's three, followed by a driving layup by Cavacini and a pair of Weber free throws, would put the Bearcats in front, 9-7, with just over five minutes left. Moments later, Thompson split a pair of free throws to up the lead to three points, before the Yellow Jackets answered with a 5-2 run to tie the game at 12 with 2:20 to go. Cavacini would then hit a jumper with just over 30 seconds left in the quarter to give the Bearcats a 14-13 lead at the end of the stanza. Over the defensively themed first quarter, both teams shot just 27 percent from the field, with SVC going 4-for-15 and Waynesburg 5-for-18.
 
After the sluggish first frame, the Bearcats scored six of the first seven points of the second quarter, with four from Cavacini, to open a 20-14 margin two minutes in. Diana Mosten's layup with 6:35 left pushed the lead to 22-15, before a turning jumper in the paint by Bender made it 24-15 with 5:25 to go. Waynesburg cut the gap to six, 28-22, with just inside three minutes left, but a layup from Thompson, followed by a six straight points from Cavacini, gave the Bearcats their largest lead of the half, 36-24, with a minute left. The veteran would then score another layup with 22 seconds left to close out SVC's scoring for the half and send SVC into the locker room with a 38-27 lead. The Bearcats outscored the 'Jackets 24-14 over the second frame, shooting 58 percent from the field (10-17) while limiting the hosts to just a 23 percent (5-21) mark. Cavacini scored 12 of SVC's second-quarter points.
 
A pair of Bender free throws in the opening minute of the third quarter upped the SVC lead to 40-27, but the Yellow Jackets countered with a 9-4 run to pull back to within single digits, 44-36, with 5:38 left in the quarter. Smith then scored five straight points for the Bearcats to push the lead back into double digits, 49-38, with 2:18 to go in the frame, but the Yellow Jackets answered with three-pointers on back-to-back trips to make it a five-point game, 49-44, with 1:24 left. Cavacini would again gain the hot hand to end the quarter, scoring five points in the final minute to extend SVC's lead to 55-46 heading into the final 10 minutes.
 
Camdon Bashor hit a pair of free throws on the opening trip of the fourth quarter to increase the SVC advantage to 57-46, and the teams would then trade buckets over the next several minutes, with Weber's layup with 4:25 left allowing the Bearcats to keep a double-digit lead, 61-50.  Eighty seconds later, Cavacini eclipsed the 30-point mark with a driving layup, before Weber scored on a fastbreak layup off a feed from Thompson to open up a 67-52 lead with 2:37 remaining. The Yellow Jackets would use a pair of three-pointers to close the gap over the final two minutes, but the 15-point margin proved too much to overcome.
 
Tori Wesolowski led Waynesburg with 13 points, while Kayla Howard scored 10 points and Julz Mohrbacher grabbed 12 rebounds.
 
The Bearcats will now close out the semester with a pair of home PAC matchups, beginning with a 5:30 p.m. date with Grove City on Wednesday, Dec. 6, in the Robert S. Carey Student Center.