Junior guard Jade Hill scored 26 points in the St. Thomas women’s basketball team’s 101-62 thrashing of UW-River Falls Saturday afternoon at Schoenecker Arena.

The Tommies (1-1) rained down on the Falcons (0-1), shooting over 45% from behind the arc and 56% from the field. Hill scored a layup off the tip to start the game and the Tommies never looked back.

“If we can get rebounds and we can get stops, you’re going to be able to see a nice fast-paced game,” coach Ruth Sinn said.

The Tommies jumped to a 10-0 lead to start the game, causing River Falls to call a timeout and reassess. St. Thomas continued to stretch their lead to 20-6 thanks to seven points from Hill.

Along with Hill, sophomore guard Amber Scalia had an elite shooting night with 24 points on 50% shooting from three-point range, while fellow sophomore guard Faith Feuerbach made three field goals and had three rebounds.

“It puts the defender in a hard spot. Are they going to guard Amber, Faith, or are they going to stop me and leave a great shooter wide open?” Hill said.

Hill continued to lead the offensive effort for the first quarter, scoring 11 points and granting her team a 30-23 lead.

St. Thomas went into the second quarter with hot shooting hands and kept pushing to a 16-point lead with under four minutes left to play. The Tommies began to falter, allowing the Falcons to finish the quarter on an 8-0 run capped off by a three-pointer from senior guard Julia Seidel.

“We’re not going to be in a lot of ball games if we start letting teams get that hot on us,” Sinn said.

St. Thomas widened the lead again in the third quarter all the way to 71-51. The Tommies piled on thanks to a team effort on both sides of the ball.

“I’m proud of our girls and how we responded at halftime. At halftime, we were coming into it and they were kind of controlling us,” Sinn said.

Sinn went on to praise the team’s ability to push forward.

“We know that Amber can shoot the cover off the ball, there’s no question,” Sinn said.

The final quarter saw a 30-11 point differential in favor of the Tommies. Sinn put her first-year players in and they continued the onslaught on the Falcons. First-year guards Zoey Washington and Lizzie Steingraber had 15 and 8 points respectively during the game after only playing a minute each against Drake.

“I just went in, just worked my tail off and I knew that if I could do the little things on defense, that offense would come,’ Washington said.

The Tommies’ next game will be at 2:30 p.m. against Utah Valley, on Nov. 18 at Schoenecker Arena.

Adam Mueller can be reached at muel7541@stthomas.edu.