The Merrimack Warriors women’s basketball team has secured the third seed for the upcoming conference tournament in Atlantic City, scheduled to begin on March 7. The team will play against the sixth-seeded opponent at 2:30 p.m.
Over their last 17 games, the Warriors have won 13 times and held opponents to fewer than 60 points in nine of those contests. Last Thursday, Madison Roman played a key role as Merrimack completed a season sweep of Sacred Heart Pioneers and achieved their fifth consecutive win—a streak that ended Saturday against Manhattan. In a recent game against Siena, four players scored in double digits, with Lydia Melaschenko leading with 22 points.
A notable moment came when the Warriors forced overtime with a buzzer-beater in the fourth quarter against Marist before securing victory. This marked their fourth season sweep this year. Two weeks ago, they limited Rider to under 40 points—something accomplished only twice by Merrimack over the past two seasons. Senior Lydia Melaschenko set a new single-season program record for three-pointers made (77) after scoring from beyond the arc in the third quarter.
Melaschenko is currently leading the MAAC in three-pointers per game and ranks sixth nationally with an average of 3.07 per game. She hit four three-pointers during her 22-point performance against Siena on Valentine’s Day and another four versus Rider two weeks ago to break her own record. Her six three-pointers helped secure a win over Sacred Heart last week, bringing her within reach of setting the new mark.
Madison Roman leads the MAAC in rebounds and recorded her 16th double-double of the season with ten rebounds and seventeen points against Manhattan on Saturday. She also contributed nine rebounds during a comeback win over Sacred Heart and tallied six steals while playing all forty minutes. Roman posted another double-double with twelve points and eleven rebounds versus Siena, followed by twenty-three points in an overtime victory over Marist.
Junior guard Paloma Garcia has reached double figures in scoring across four straight games and seven out of her last eight appearances. During this period, she collected five or more rebounds six times.
Defensively, Merrimack has allowed fewer than sixty points in eleven of its last seventeen games and kept opponents below seventy points fourteen times during that span. Madison Roman leads all conference players with 206 defensive rebounds while Paloma Garcia is third in steals at sixty-three for the season. As a team, Merrimack tops its conference with one hundred eleven blocked shots—sixty coming from graduate student Oralye Kiefer.
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