NEW HAVEN, Conn. – On a night when neither team's offenses were crisp, the Yale women's basketball team used tough rebounding and took advantage of early Big Red foul trouble to earn a hard fought 56-38 victory this evening in Lee Amphitheater. The Big Red will close its regular season tomorrow night when it travels to Brown for a contest at 6 p.m.
 
Cornell (14-13, 6-7) did not have a single player reach double figures. Nia Mashall, who played just seven minutes in the first half due to foul trouble, finished with a team-high eight points and will enter tomorrow's game with the Bears needing 19 points to break the school record for points in a single season. Megan LeDuc and Maddie Campbell had seven points each, with LeDuc adding two assists and a team-high six rebounds. Kerri Moran finished with six points, four rebounds and two assists.
 
Yale (13-17, 4-9) got a spark off the bench by Lena Munzer, who finished with a game-high 15 points on 4-of-7 shooting, including 2-of-5 from 3-point range.  Nyasha Sarju also finished in double-figures with 14 points.
 
Cornell shot just .278 percent from the floor (15-54) and a mere .111 percent from beyond the arc (1-9), while Yale finished at .373 overall (19-53) and .333 from 3-point range (5-15).
 
The Bulldogs held the 45-32 advantage on the boards but finished with five more turnovers than the Big Red (20-15).
 
The Big Red used some tough defense over the first period, holding Yale to a 3-of-12 performance from the floor, but the Bulldogs knocked down 6-of-7 free throws over the first 10 minutes to erase an early 6-4 Cornell lead. The Big Red's early buckets came in the paint, with four points from Marshall and a driving layup from LeDuc.
 
A traditional three-point play from Munzer handed Yale its first leads at the 2:54 mark and moments later a trey by Munzer, followed by a single made free throw from Whitney Wyckoff put the home team up, 11-6.
 
A jumper in the lane by Campbell ended the Bulldog run and after two more free throws from Munzer, LeDuc hit a trey at the buzzer to cut home team's lead to 13-11 at the first break.
 
The Big Red had three straight 3-point attempts rim out to start the second period as Yale used a 9-1 run to go up by double-digits (22-12) with 5:05 to play in the second stanza.
 
Coming out of the media timeout, Cornell used a quick 6-2 run, with four points from Moran, to get back within six points (24-18) with 3:21 to play, forcing Yale to take a timeout. From there, neither team could manage to score until a driving layup from Munzer at the buzzer sent Yale into halftime with the 26-18 lead.  
 
The Big Red pushed the tempo and stepped up its rebounding early in the third period to get within four points (28-24) at the 3:30 mark but Yale closed the stanza with 12 unanswered points to go up, 40-24, at the final break.
 
Cornell opened the fourth quarter on a 6-3 run with an acrobatic layup from Marisa Knox, and back-to-back layups from Nicholle Aston and Campbell sandwiched around a trey from Wyckoff, to make it a 43-30 contest. But whatever momentum Cornell managed to steal in those opening moments was killed when Munzer hit a trey at the end of a shot clock to push the home team's lead back to 16 (46-30).  
 
From there Yale rolled to the 56-38 victory.