ITHACA, N.Y. – The Ithaca College women's basketball team claimed its tenth victory of the season on Friday evening with a 78-59 win over Union College. The Bombers are now 10-4 on the year and 7-1 in Liberty League play.
 
With the win, IC is now in first place in conference standings.
 
Three Ithaca players reached double figures led by junior Grace Cannon's 24 points, eight rebounds and four steals. Senior Cassidy O'Malley netted 18 points and senior KellyAnne O'Reilly finished with 14 points, three assists and three steals.
 
The Bombers opened up the game in the strongest fashion, going on a 17-2 run in the first five minutes.
 
O'Malley scored the first six points to give IC a 6-2 edge with 8:30 remaining. O'Reilly then drilled a 3-pointer and a hit a layup to extend the lead. Cannon put the Bombers' lead into double-digits with a layup at 6:55 followed by another O'Malley layup. Cannon closed out the run with a jumper at 4:57.
 
O'Reilly and O'Malley then put in back-to-back buckets to extend IC's advantage to 17 points, 21-4. The Dutchwomen, however, went on to outscore IC 10-4 in the final 2:25 to close the gap to 10 points at the end of the first quarter.
 
Union opened the second quarter with five straight points from Joana Santos to pull within five points of the Bombers.
 
Cannon put in a layup and O'Reilly drilled a 3-pointer with 6:12 on the clock. The Dutchwomen were persistent however, scoring the next seven points to close the gap to 32-29 with 4:26 remaining.
 
Ithaca closed out the half on an 11-1 run, highlighted by a Juliana Gamboa buzzer-beater to take a 43-30 advantage.
 
Cannon picked up right where she left off, opening the second half with a layup just 10 seconds in.
 
With 6:17 remaining in the quarter, Union brought the difference back down to single-digits, 49-40, following another Santos 3-pointer.  A layup from Raisner less than one minute later cut it down to seven points.
 
The teams exchanged points through the remainder of the quarter, but ultimately Ithaca closed out the quarter with back-to-back layups to extend its lead to 60-48.
 
As the top clock ticked down in the final quarter, Ithaca maintained its double-digit lead, as Union was only able to get within 11 points.
 
The Bombers took their biggest lead of the game at that point as first-year Emily Dorn hit a layup with 6:39 left on the clock. Cannon would go on to extend it to a 20-point lead just over two minutes later, followed by another layup from Dorn at 3:12 to give IC a 76-54 edge. The 22-point difference was the biggest lead for Ithaca against the Dutchwomen.
 
Ithaca went 35-for-65 on the day for 53.8 shooting and the defense forced 18 Union turnovers.
 
Three players also reached double-digits for Union, led by Amber Raisner with 16 points. Santos netted 14 and Laura Vinton finished with 10 points and a team-high six rebounds.
 
The Bombers are back in action tomorrow against RPI at 2 p.m. The Engineers are coming off a 77-66 loss to Vassar tonight.