Buffalo, NY-Women's basketball battled AMCC Tournament bound Mount Aloysius all the way to final buzzer and the visitors needed a last-second basket at the end of overtime to get past the Spartans 63-61.

Alexis Smith (Hamburg, NY/Hamburg) led D'Youville with 20 points and 13 rebounds.

The Spartans opened the game with an 8-2 run and carried that momentum all the way to a   33-19 halftime lead. Shannon Dougherty (West Seneca, NY/West Seneca West) made 3 three-pointers for 9 of her 14 points.

In the second-half, Mount Aloysius opened strong with an 11-2 run and pushed past the Spartans for the first time in the game at 39-38 with 11:44 to play. Alexis smith would answer with a bucket and the two times Aloysius tied the game, Smith would again answer with a field-goal. When Aloysius took a one-point lead with 1:42, Smith got to the line and tied the game. The freshman center scored 11 of the Spartan's 19 second-half points.

In overtime, Aloysius jumped out to an early lead and D'Youville matched the score four times but never got ahead.  The final deadlock of the game came with D'Youville trailing by two and Lynn-Lee Stresing (Eden, NY/Eden) converted a layup off a nice Bridget Andrews (Amherst, NY/Sacred Heart Academy) feed with six seconds remaining.  Andrews finished the game with 10 points and 6 assists.

That tied the score 61-61 and set up for Mount Aloysius' Becky Bard to score the winner on a coast-to-coast drive as the final horn sounded.

Andrews and Maria Rosati (West Seneca, NY/St. Mary's) played all 45 minutes of the game. Rosati nearly pulled off a triple-double finishing with 8 points, 8 rebounds, and a game-high 9 assists. Rosati also collected a game-high 4 steals. 

"It's a tough way to end the season because we worked so hard today," said D'Youville Head coach Dan Glover. "But to come this close against a team that will be the number five seed at our conference tournament shows us how far we have come and how close we are. That should drive us in the off-season."

Under first-year coach Glover, D'Youville improved to seventh in the AMCC standings (up from ninth a season ago). The Spartans won 7 games this season, 6 in conference, an improvement of plus-three from last year.

The program's direction should continue to trend upward. There were no juniors or seniors on this year's roster. The 2012-13 Spartan bunch featured five sophomores and five freshmen.