ROCK SPRINGS, WY – The Laramie County Community College women's basketball team dropped a game for the first time this season at the Western Invitational, falling to Snow College 77-67 on Friday night.

The Golden Eagles trailed by as much as 15 in the first half and could never make up the ground they lost to the Badgers.

"I thought we battled a little better in the second half, but you dig yourself such a big hole, it takes so much energy and effort to try and come out of that hole," Head Coach Ayana McWilliams said. "We had our runs to try to do it, but we could never overcome that type of deficit.

The opening quarter showed early that this was going to be a battle. LCCC and Snow traded the lead four times in the opening quarter with the Badgers breaking loose last with a 14-11 lead after ten minutes.

The Golden Eagles kept them within a possession until 6:30 remained and the offense cooled down for LCCC. The same wasn't the case for Snow College and they rolled off an 11-0 run that was a part of an 18-5 finish to the half which put LCCC down 39-24 at the break.

"It was kind of weird because it was really back and forth early and they were the team that woke up first," McWilliams said. "Once they were able to do that it took us too long to find a groove to get into it."

The second half opened with the Golden Eagles taking charge with a 9-2 run of their own to cut the lead down to 41-33 and forced a Snow timeout. It was well timed, and the Badgers pushed the lead back to 14 with a 6-0 run into the media timeout.

From there, the rest of the game was a repetitive story of the Golden Eagles cutting the deficit to around ten before Snow would answer back to build it to 15 again. The game did end on a 10-3 LCCC run to close the gap to 77-67, but it wasn't enough to keep the Golden Eagles from their first loss.

LCCC outscored Snow 43-38 in the second half but it was too late against a quality opponent to rally back.

"We had to figure out how to come out of the locker room and play, and I think that's what happened. We came out and we were ready to play and if we had started the game the way we started the second half, I think we'd have a different story," McWilliams added.

Blanche Toualeu led the offensive attack in scoring with 16 points, eight of which came at the free throw line. Toualeu also had a career high of five steals in the game.

Lylah Spring picked up another 15 and led the Golden Eagles in rebounding with six.

Two other Golden Eagles hit double digits. Jessica Bakhsh and Kelly MeGowan and Jessica Bakhsh had 11 and 10 points respectively.

LCCC finished the night shooting 42 percent from the field and were 7-13 from three-point range in the game, but they allowed Snow to shoot 50 percent on 10 more shots.

The Golden Eagles have a short night to rest before they take to the court at noon for their second game of the Western Invitational against Western Nebraska Community College.

"We just have to go back to the drawing board and first things first and that's come out with some energy, some enthusiasm, and compete," McWilliams said.

Streaming information can be found at www.golccc.com.