At long last, the Binghamton women’s basketball team played consistently well for two straight conference games.

Playing highly aggressive basketball, the Bearcats (10-15, 6-6 AE) hit 31 of 40 free throw attempts and defeated the Vermont Catamounts (16-9, 6-6 AE) 77-67 at Patrick Gymnasium. Binghamton’s leading scorer, Laura Sario, played a complete game, leading all players with 19 points and five assists.

Fifteen of Sario’s points came in the second half, where the Bearcats shot 55 percent to hold off the hard-charging Catamounts. Vermont was paced by a strong 16-point, nine-rebound effort from sophomore center Andrea Cihal, who hit eight of her 10 field goal attempts to give Binghamton a scare.

‘Vermont shot the ball tremendously in the second half,’ said head coach Rich Conover on the postgame radio show. ‘But we hit some big free throws late to win this thing.’

Vermont’s only lead of the contest came at the start, when Courtnay Pilypaitis hit a layup to open the scoring. The Bearcats locked Pilypaitis down for the rest of the game, as the talented freshman scored only five for the game, her lowest output of the season.

‘Courtnay is the leader of their team, and to hold her down is a big thing,’ Conover said.

The Bearcats took a 4-2 lead on a Laura Franceski layup with 17:57 remaining in the first half and never relinquished the lead. In several conference games, whenever BU got a big head start on it opponent, it always surrendered the lead. That was not the case Saturday.

Every time Vermont went on a run to make the game tight, BU responded with a big hoop or an assertive play to get them to the line. Binghamton’s clutch play made Vermont’s task as futile as Sisyphus’s attempts to roll the boulder up the mountain. All eight Bearcats who played in the game scored in the second half, as BU was successfully able to replicate the total team effort that produced a key win over UMBC.

‘The eight players who played all contributed,’ Conover said.

Aside from Sario, the Bearcats placed three other players in double figures. Junior forward Brianna Thompson, who has established herself as Binghamton’s blue-collar worker, collected 13 points and seven rebounds. Rebecka Lindgren, the conference’s leading long-range shooter, failed to connect on a 3 but was ice from the line, registering six of her 12 points from the charity stripe. Laine Kurpniece, now incredibly comfortable in her reserve role, barely missed a double-double, with 10 points and nine rebounds.

As a result of Boston University’s 63-61 home win over Maine, Binghamton’s first conference winning streak of the year places the team in third place in a tightly packed America East. Hartford and Stony Brook have broken away from the rest of the pack, but the third seed in the conference tournament is highly coveted. The third spot is on the opposite side of the bracket from Hartford, and allows the team that earns it to get a win under its belts before they most likely play the Seawolves in a potential conference semifinal.

‘The league is very tough,’ Conover said. ‘Hartford and Stony Brook have separated themselves a bit, but positions three through nine are very close, and to get our second away win of the year at Vermont was huge.’

SARIO NAMED AE PLAYER OF WEEK: BU small forward Laura Sario was recognized Monday as America East Player of the Week for her strong effort in victories over UMBC and Vermont. Against the Retrievers, she scored 14 points, including a clutch 3-pointer, to put the Bearcats up 65-59 with 2:34 left. In a crucial game against the Catamounts, Sario posted one of her best games of the season, registering 19 points, six rebounds and five assists in 31 minutes of action.