CMU women's basketball falls to 0-2 in loss at Michigan
Central Michigan's senior guard Jess Lawson dribbles into her offense on Monday, Nov. 4, in McGuirk Arena. Lawson went on to have ten points against Coastal Carolina. (CM-Life | Mary Nowosacki)
Central Michigan women’s basketball visited Big Ten powerhouse Michigan on Thursday night, where it lost 99-62. The loss puts the Chippewas at 0-2 to start the season.
Michigan got to work straight from tip-off, rattling off 13 straight points. CMU didn’t score its first basket until halfway through the first quarter. The Wolverines led 29-8 through one quarter, and their lead would only grow from there.
The Chippewas were able to put together a good second quarter, scoring 22 points, their highest-scoring quarter of the game.
“We competed in three out of the four quarters,” head coach Kristin Haynie said. “We easily could have given up, and we didn’t, we kept playing hard, and our players did a good job of staying in the fight and just competing.”
CMU womens basketball
The second half didn’t get any better for the Chippewas as U of M continued to pile on points, eventually pushing the lead to 37. CMU ended the game the same way it started, scoring no points in the last five minutes.
The team struggled to generate offense at times, resulting in the two scoring droughts of five minutes.
“Part of that is turnovers,” Haynie said. “I thought at times our offense was stagnant, we’re standing around and not running our motion the right way, just being stagnant and turning the ball over was the reasons why we had those.”
Central Michigan matched its offensive output from the first game with 62 points, going 39% from the field and 33% from three. Freshman forward Riley Smith led the team in points with 13. Senior guard Lisa Tesson, senior guard Jess Lawson, and freshman forward Ayanna Sarai-Darrington all had 12 points.
The bench stepped up big time to contribute 46 of the team's 62 points.
“I thought our bench did a really good job coming in the game and being a spark for us,” Haynie said. “We scored 46 points off the bench, so we were really happy about that.”
The Chippewas come back home to play the Bradley Braves at McGuirk Arena on Sunday at 1 p.m.
“We’re back home and we have to protect our homecourt,” Haynie said. So, we just have to come out with the grit and toughness and get it done on the defensive end and rebound. Our rebounding was a little bit disappointing tonight, we’ve just gotta get back to rebounding and defending against Bradley, and then getting our offense to do better efficiency-wise.”
