ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell women's basketball's late fourth-quarter push cut the Yale lead to four, but the Bulldogs squeaked out the 66-59 win on Saturday afternoon in Newman Arena. Yale improves to 6-15 (3-5 Ivy) while Cornell falls to 7-13 (1-7 Ivy).

Cornell was led by freshman point guard Azareya Kilgoe, who tallied 17 points off of 7-for-13 shooting from the field. The rookie also accounted for two rebounds, two assists, a steal, and a block. Kaya Ingram was the other Big Red athlete to hit double figures, notching 15 points and a team-high six assists. Junior forward Summer Parker-Hall grabbed a game-best eight rebounds.

Yale's Jenna Clark led all scorers with 18 points, while also grabbing five boards and dishing two assists. Brenna McDonald followed with 14 points on a 6-of-10 shooting performance from the field. McDonald led all players with three blocks. Kiley Capstraw rounded out the trio with 12 points. Nyla McGill led the Bulldogs with six boards, in addition to a game-high seven assists and six steals.

Both teams struggled to find the bottom of the cylinder to open the game, shooting a combined 0-5 from the field until Emily Pape broke the streak with a layup inside as part of a 5-0 run with an Azareya Kilgoe three to give Cornell the early cushion. Yale would immediately match, ripping off a 9-0 run over 2:42 to take a 9-5 lead. Yale kept the until late in the opening ten minutes, as Pape knocked down two free throws to tie things at twelve after one.

Cornell and Yale traded punches to open the second stanza, as Jenna Clark (two points) and Kilgoe (four points) led their offenses to keep things knotted at 16 apiece. The Bulldogs took control after, jumping out to a nine-point cushion as the minutes trickled down. Cornell did have the last laugh of the opening 20 minutes as Summer Parker-Hall glided to the rim for two while snapping almost a five-minute scoring drought to put the Big Red down 27-20 heading into the halftime break.

Cornell's offensive struggles carried over into the opening two minutes of the third, as it could not find a bucket, allowing the Bulldogs to jump to its largest lead of the game at eleven thanks to consecutive buckets by Jenna Clark. Kaya Ingram gave the spark the Big Red needed, breaking the scoreless drought with her first bucket of the game before following that up 30 seconds later with two from the charity stripe to trim the deficit back down to nine. The pendulum continued to swing back towards the home Big Red as Kilgoe and Clarke Jackson combined for six points over the final 1:19 to put Cornell within seven heading into the final ten minutes.

The Big Red continued to chip away at the deficit in the final quarter, eventually getting into within two possessions on Ingram's eleventh point of the evening to force a Bulldogs timeout with 6:56 to go. Cornell looked like it had the momentum to pull off the comeback but could not get any closer, as Yale pushed its winning streak over the Big Red to seven consecutive with a 66-59 victory.

BIG RED NOTABLES

• The Big Red's 10 assists mark the sixth time in eight Ivy games that Cornell has tallied 10 or more.
• Ingram notched her 200th point of the season in the contest. She now totals 208 on the year.
• Kilgoe is now on a three-game double-digit scoring streak.

UP NEXT

Cornell hits the road next week to take on Harvard and Dartmouth in a double-Ivy weekend. Tipoff against the Crimson is set for Friday, Feb. 16 at 6 p.m. in Cambridge, Mass.