Box Score
 
NEWARK, NJ—Rider sophomore MyNeshia McKenzie led all players in points (14) and rebounds (10), while adding a team-leading three steals Sunday afternoon in the visiting Broncs' wire-to-wire 60-50 non-conference women's basketball victory in the Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Athletic Center.
 
McKenzie scored eight of her points in a 10-2 spurt to open the second half, as Rider stretched a 13-point halftime lead to a game-best 21 points, 46-25, with 16:28 remaining in the contest.
 
The Broncs (5-3) won for the third time in the last four games, with the only loss in that span being a respectable 58-51 defeat on the road at #20 Georgetown.
 
The other double-figure scorer for Rider was junior forward Carleigh Brown, who added 10 points and pulled down seven rebounds. Freshman guard Emily Fazzini picked up nine points, while junior Sironda Chambers finished with eight points, nine rebounds and two steals in the first-ever women's basketball game between Rider and NJIT.
 
NJIT, which got 12 points and seven rebounds off the bench from sophomore Uju Nwankwo, dropped to 4-4 with its third loss in the last four games.
 
Nwankwo, an extremely active defender, also matched her career blocked shots high (5) and made all three of NJIT's steals.
 
Freshman Nicole Maticka added five rejections against Rider, raising her season total in just eight games to a program Division I-record 28. She passed the old mark of 27, set last season in 28 games by then-senior Ivana Seric. Maticka, who is averaging 3.5 blocks per game, was 11th in the latest national Division I blocked shots rankings posted last week.
 
Junior Rayven Johnson shared the NJIT rebounding lead on Sunday with Nwankwo, grabbing seven boards. Johnson also scored eight points, as did Melanie Griffin.
 
Among NJIT's eight opponents, only Manhattan (75 points in a 75-66 win on November 27) has reached 70 points. But the Highlanders, too frequently, have sputtered on offense for significant stretches on offense and that was a problem again on Sunday.
 
Coming off a season-low 37 points in a 61-37 road loss at Lehigh on December 7, NJIT started slowly against Rider, falling behind, 11-2, before Johnson hit a 3-pointer nearly seven minutes into the game (13:05).
 
The Highlanders soon used their best run of the half, 5-0, to close to within four points, 18-14, after Alyssa Albanese connected on a pair of the free throws with 9:03 left.
 
However, the Broncs answered that threat with a 7-0 run, started by a McKenzie three and followed by a layup for Brown and jumper for Alyssa Parsons that stretched the lead to double-figures for the first time, 25-14, with 5:41 on the clock.
 
Nwankwo scored for NJIT to break the run, but the interruption was fleeting, as a Fazzini three and another Brown layup made it 30-14 for the visitors on a 12-2 spurt in a span of 2:19, from 6:53 to 4:34.
 
A jump shot for Johnson and a pair of Nwankwo layups briefly got the deficit down to nine for the Highlanders at 30-21 with 2:52 left in the half, but the Broncs outscored NJIT the rest of the way, 6-2, for a comfortable 36-23 halftime lead.
 
Brown led Rider at the break with eight points, followed by seven apiece for Fazzini and Chambers, while Nwankwo's 10 points were game-high at the break.
 
Rider opened the second half 10-2, capped by McKenzie's traditional 3-point play that made it 46-25 3:32 into the final period. Fazzini opened the second-half scoring with a layup and McKenzie hit a jumper at 18:40, a 3-point shot 16:50 (22 seconds after Griffin had scored NJIT's only bucket in the run), and then the conventional 3-point play on jump shot and free throw at 16:28.
 
The Highlanders did not get any closer than 14 points until the final two minutes, when Griffin drove the lane for a layup that made it 58-46 with 1:58 left, prompting a Rider timeout.
 
The Broncs added a basket in the last minute, before NJIT closed the game with made jumpers by Griffin and Kim Tullis that brought the score to 60-50, which would be the final and also represented the smallest deficit for the Highlanders since they trailed 30-21 with 2:52 left in the first half.
 
NJIT is off a week until Sunday, December 18, when it hosts Colgate in a 2 pm game in the Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Athletic Center.
 
Next week's contest will be the third meeting in three seasons between the Highlanders and the Raiders. NJIT beat Colgate, 52-41, in Newark on December 9, 2009, and the Raiders were 85-58 winners over NJIT on November 17, 2010 in Hamilton, NY.