Box Score SAN RAFAEL, Calif. — The Dominican University of California women's basketball made school history on Thursday night by hosting an NCAA Division I basketball team for the first time in the Conlan Center.

Despite a strong effort in the second half, Dominican (1-9) couldn't overcome a poor shooting performance in the first half while the visiting Brown University Bears (7-4) outrebounded the Lady Penguins 49-26, 18-2 on the offensive end, in the non-conference game to post a 66-45 victory in the “Holiday Ivy Classic.”

“I'm actually excited about the game because Brown is a really good team so defensively we did a really good job to hold them at the end,” said Head Coach Brianna Chambers. “We outscored them [24-23] in the second half which is a good sign that we are going in the right direction.”

Sophomore Kayla Valentine topped the NCAA Div. II Lady Penguins with 17 points on 6-of-9 shooting and freshman Ariana Flynn contributed eight points but Dominican committed 30 turnovers in the contest, 19 in the first half when the host team missed 16 of 22 shots. Hannah Passafuime (Soquel) and Lindsay Nickel (Los Altos), a pair of Bay Area products, led the Bears with 17 and 14 points, respectively.

The Lady Penguins struggled against Brown's aggressive over-playing man-to-man defense early and committed turnovers on their first five possessions. The Bears converted all of them into baskets for a 10-0 lead and extended it to 14-0 before Valentine netted Dominican's first points of the game on a three-point play with 16:18 left in the first half.

At one point, the Lady Penguins had more turnovers than field goals attempts but they did make a run at the Bears. Back-to-back 3-pointers by Melissa Wise and Flynn narrowed Brown's lead to 25-13, with 6:26 left in the first half. The Bears, however, pulled away in the final minutes of the first half, scoring the last 11 points to take a 41-15 advantage at intermission.

Valentine led the Penguins with five points, but Dominican shot only 27.3 percent (6-for-22) in the first half. Lauren Hyatt added four points and three rebounds off the bench.

Brown outrebounded Dominican 24-9 in the first half.  Passafuime topped the Bears, who shot 50 percent from the floor in the first 20 minutes, with 10 points. She made 2-of-3  three-pointers. Dominican missed nine of its 11 3-point shots in the first half.

In the second half, Brown's lead grew to 34 points, 55-21, on a pair of consecutive 3-pointers by Nickel and another by Jacquelli Schoninger. Valentine scored 10 points in the next 11 minutes as the Lady Penguins outscored Brown 24-11 over the final 14 minutes of the contest.

The Lady Penguins, whose nine non-conference defeats this season came against teams who had a combined record of 52-33 coming into Thursday night, begin Pacific West Conference play on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m., hosting Grand Canyon University. The Lady Antelopes are currently 8-1 and ranked 15th in the nation in the USA Today/ESPN poll. The game will be broadcast online with audio at http://radio.dominican.edu and video at www.dominicanathletics.com/livevideo.