SCHENECTADY, N.Y. – Despite new career-highs in scoring from sophomore Jelena Perovic and junior Jenna Forman, the Union College women's basketball team dropped its 2023-24 season opener to SUNY Cobleskill by a 73-66 margin on Wednesday evening at Viniar Athletic Center.
 
Perovic had an excellent game for Union (0-1), leading the team with 20 points on 9-of-14 shooting and hauling in six rebounds. Forman hit 6-of-7 shots from the field on the way to a career-high 16 points while also grabbing a team-leading seven boards and blocking three shots. Senior Kennedy Clark chipped in eight points and seven rebounds as well for the home team.
 
Cara Walker led all players with 24 points, 11 rebounds and four steals to pace SUNY Cobleskill (1-0), helped by 17 trips to the free-throw line that were more than the entire Union team had in the game.
 
The Fighting Tigers scored the first four points of the game and never trailed after that, successfully keeping Union from mounting any sort of extended run. The Garnet Chargers got within one later in the opening frame after a three from junior Emma Riley that made it a 15-14 game with 2:21 left, but a quick 6-2 stretch gave Cobleskill a 21-16 lead after 10 minutes.
 
Union again got within one early in the second after a Forman bucket, but a subsequent 14-3 run opened up a 12-point lead at 35-23 for the Fighting Tigers. The Cobleskill lead grew to as many as 15 in the second stanza before settling at 14 (42-28) at the half.
 
The Garnet Chargers hung around for much of the third quarter, getting the lead into single digits on multiple occasions and heading into the fourth down by only eight (59-51) after a jumper from senior Maura Conan in the waning seconds. It was a six-point game early in the fourth after a jumper from first-year Talia Weinstock put the score at 62-56, but Union went nearly six minutes without a field goal to allow the deficit to grow back to 11. A conventional three-point play by Forman with 34 ticks remaining gave Union new life and made it a 68-64 game, but Cobleskill hit 5-of-8 free throws the rest of the way to hold off a Union comeback attempt.
 
Union shot the ball better from the field, hitting 27-of-61 (44.3 percent) of its attempts compared to 35.4 percent (23 of 65) for the visitors. The difference came from the charity stripe, where Cobleskill made 34 trips and made 18 (52.9 percent), while Union had only 14 free-throw attempts and made seven.
 
Union will look to get into the win column on Saturday with a 4 p.m. tipoff at SUNY New Paltz.