No. 16 Tampa Picks Up Historic Win in National Showdown

TAMPA, Fla. - The No. 16 University of Tampa (10-0, 1-0 SSC) women's basketball team won its Sunshine State Conference opener while setting a program record for consecutive wins to start a season in a 52-49 victory over No. 23 Rollins College (8-3, 0-2 SSC).

The 10 wins eclipses the previous record from the 2009-10 squad that opened the year at 9-0. The program record for consecutive victories is 13, which also happened in 2009.

After taking a 26-22 lead to the half, Tampa led by as many as nine points in the second half before the Tars closed the gap. With a 50-49 lead and 27-seconds to play, UT's Shamika Williams hit a pair of free throws followed by a defensive stop to secure the Spartan victory in the final minute.

Moriah Hodge led Tampa with 16 points as Juliana Cavallaro and Illyssa Vivo chipped in 13 and 12 respectively. Williams grabbed a team-high seven rebounds as Sadie Oyer had four assists.

Shooting 40.4 percent from the field, Tampa outrebounded the Tars 37-28 as UT also connected on six 3-pointers.

The Spartans will now play a pair of SSC games on the road, beginning with a trip to Eckerd on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. Live stats and a webcast will be available through TampaSpartans.com.

Fans may follow University of Tampa athletics on Twitter (www.twitter.com/utspartans), Facebook (www.facebook.com/tampaspartans), YouTube (youtube.com/utathletics) and Instragram (tampaspartans). UT also offers blAst, a free text messaging service that sends text alerts following all Spartan events. To sign up, please register at www.tampaspartans.com.