CMU women's basketball drops fifth-straight on the road at Ball State
With three minutes left in the game, freshman guard Bridget Utberg silenced the crowd as she made a three-pointer to bring Central Michigan women's basketball's deficit down to four.
However, the Chippewas could not score down the stretch letting Ball State finish the game on a 5-0 run to win, 71-62, on Saturday.
"Yeah, I think we really played hard for four quarters, and we were right there till the end," said head coach Heather Oesterle.
In the first quarter, it was the Chippewa freshmen backcourt duo of guard Sydney Harris and Utberg that combined for nine of 11 points. CMU started the game down 7-2 but crawled back to take a 11-10 lead. A miscommunication on defense in transition led Ball State to score a wide-open layup and take a 12-11 lead after the quarter.
Both teams shooting struggled in the first quarter as CMU went 5-of-15 and the Cardinals went 5-of-12 from the field.
In the last two minutes of the second quarter, Ball State finished on a 9-2 run to take a 34-28 lead going into the half. The Chippewas continued their struggles from the field, shooting 6-of-14 and 2-of-7 from deep.
In the first half, CMU had trouble getting the ball into the paint to junior center Rochelle Norris as the Cardinals shut her down. Norris was not even able to put up a shot. Norris finished the game with zero points and six rebounds.
"Yeah, that's Ball state, you know, their philosophy defensively is they're going to leave the corners open and they're going to pack it in," Oesterle said. "So, Rochelle had to shed somebody fronting her and then she had somebody that helps, but I am going to show the team I mean, I'm only in the second quarter right now, but we've missed her three times in the first half so far."
Utberg and Harris scored 14 of CMU's 28 points in the half. In the second quarter, they got help from freshman guard Taylor Anderson and sophomore guard Tiana Timpe as they generated an 8-0 run to give the Chippewas the lead.
"Harris and Utberg are doing a nice job," Oesterle said. "They're definitely building confidence, especially I would say Bridget is finding kind of her own way now. We need her to score from the start of the game. I'm clipping the game right now and I thought we missed Rochelle, who's usually another score for us a couple times on the high-low, but this is a team in Ball State that really likes to sag and protect the paint, so that's why it opened up for the three-point shot today."
Ball State controlled the paint in the first half finishing with 22 points in the paint.
The third quarter was all Harris as she scored 14 points alone in the quarter. She made four three-pointers to help the Chippewas cut a nine-point deficit into four, trailing 53-49 going into the fourth quarter.
"I thought she played really well," Oesterle said. "There's a couple of times where I thought she was trying to shoot over bigger players but yeah, we needed her to score, and she rose to the challenge. I thought Tiana came in and gave us some good minutes it's just like when people sag like that into the post and protect the paint, we're going to have to hit outside shots. Our goal today was to hit seven plus, and we hit twelve, but it's just like we got to figure out how to get some inside outside presences even when a team is packing it in."
In the fourth quarter BSU went on a 6-0 run to take a 63-55 lead. With the crowd going wild, Harris and Utberg found a way to block out the noise and cut the deficit. With three minutes left Utberg made a three to put CMU within four points. However, the Chippewas could not put together a run as the Cardinals held on to the victory.
"I think there were a couple of crucial possessions we had where we didn't get a good look, or we got a good look and just didn't hit the shot," Oesterle said. "... I just thought they hit their shots down the stretch, and you know, we did get some open looks, but we just didn't knock them down."
Harris and Utberg were the only players to score double-digit points as Harris finished with 26 with Utberg put up 15.
The Cardinals finished the game shooting 51.1% from the field and had 40 points in the paint. They also capitalized off of the Chippewas' mistakes scoring 14 points off turnovers.
"For the most part I thought we did a nice job defensively," Oesterle said. "They could score, we just weren't scoring... then we went to a small lineup, and they scored a couple of times in the post, but I thought for the most part our small lineup did a really nice job."
The Chippewas look to snap a five-game losing streak as they travel back to McGuirk on Wednesday to take on the Ohio Bobcats at 7 p.m.
