In a Saturday matinee at Patrick Gymnasium, the University of Vermont Women’s Basketball team was brought down by the sharp-shooting Binghamton University Bearcats, 77-67. Despite placing four scorers in dou-ble figures, the Catamounts, led by soph-omore center Andrea Cihal’s team high 16 points, shot just 39% from the field and were unable to contain the Bearcats’ stiflingly balanced offensive attack. Although Binghamton converted 44% of their field goals, it was their con-sistent free throw shooting (31-40) that extinguished any second half hopes of a Catamount comeback. With the defeat the Cats slip to 16-9 (6-6 America East) on the season.”Today comes down to we played a phenomenal team and we weren’t able to play well defensively and fouled Bing-hamton too much,” Vermont head coach Sharon Dawley said.Taking advantage of the Cats’ 1-8 shooting start, Binghamton secured a 12-4 lead after eight minutes of play. The Bearcats’ balanced attack net-ted six players at least four first half points. UVM hung in thanks to the supreme post play and offensive rebounding of Cihal and sparkplug leadership of se-nior captain Brittney Cross. Despite shooting just 29% for the half, the Cats headed into halftime trail-ing by just four, 30-26.In the second half, sophomore Sy Ja-nousek provided a lift off the bench for the Cats. Her three pointer nearly 5 min-utes in cut the Bearcat lead to 40-37. Following the steady hand of Cross (8 assists) and clutch outside shooting of sophomore Amy Rosenkrantz, UVM remained in striking distance for much of the final half. However, a layup by freshman May Kotsopoulos with seven minutes remain-ing to make the score 52-50 would be the closest the Cats would get. Despite shooting a sizzling 50% from the field in the second half, the Cats’ comeback was devastated by Bingham-ton’s clutch free throw shooting down the stretch (24-31). Six Bearcats scored at least 7 points.”I think Binghamton is a tremendous team because they have five players who are always working together on the same page,” Dawley said. “We hurt our-selves by fouling too much. “It’s hard to make up the difference when you send a team to the [foul] line 40 times. “We’ve had a lot of peaks and valleys this season and we will go back to work on Monday to get back to what we do well,” promised Dawley. The Cats’ next chance to redeem themselves will come Feb. 20th when they host UMBC at 7pm at Patrick Gym-nasium.