Kent, the defending MAC tournament champs, are 16-8 (8-3), in a 3 ay tie for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. Miami is 14-8 ( 6-5) and in a 2 way tie for 5th and 6th. We have a 3 game winning streak, haven’t had a 4 game streak since Coach Duffy left. Kent just won at Troy and by 11. They did lose their last MAC game at NIU.
Kent is up all time 52 to 48 and has won 8 of the last 10. Earlier this year Kent pulled away in the 4th quarter and beat Miami in Oxford 77-63. Kent is first in the MAC in scoring wuth 76.2ppg. They ae also second in rebounding. Miami is first in the MAC in defense, giving up56 ppg and we are first in forcing TO’s at 21.7 pg.
Starters for Kent
6-2 SR Jenna Batcsh and averages 16.6 ppg and has 40 threes
6-3 SR Bridgett Dunn averages 9.9rpg and has 41 thres
6- SOPH Janae Tyler averages 10.9 and had a career high 26 points Saturday at Troy.
5-4 JR Dionna Gray 8.3ppg
5-8 Soph Mya Babbitt 12.1ppg
5-9 Soph Enjulina Gonzalez averages 17ppg for Miami and is second in the league in 3 point % at 41.9%… We have made a big jump this year. All season Coach Box has talked about getting to the top of the league and shooting to win the MAC tournament in March. So far we have come close to the 3 teams tied at 8-3, but they all ended up being losses. This will not be easy, but here is another chance to take that big step.
15 t0 13 after one. We have no 2 pointers, 4 3’s and a ft. Tamar has driven by her defender 3 times for layups and missed them all,
Enj has zero points. Katie has 2 fouls. Maya has two 3’s. Emily and Ilse are back and playing.
I thought the 3rd quarter was as good as we have played all year against good competition, and we did it on the road,plus we got some bad calls. The 4th quarter was not good, but we did manage to do enough not to give it away. Still lots of growing pains.
Just like last Saturday in Louisiana, we handled the pressure badly and it could have cost us the game, but we did just enough to hold on. Tamar does not seem to understand how to take care of the ball and keep control of the game.
Enj had no points at halftime but 12 in the third where we went from down 5 to up 11, scoring the last 16 points of the quarter. She also added 4 late points to enable us to hold on. Just like last Saturday in Louisiana, we handled the pressure badly and it could have cost us the game, but we did just enough to hold on. Tamar does not seem to understand how to take care of the ball and keep the clock running and draw fouls. They need to have her watch tapes of Ipsaro running the clock and maintaining control of the ball and drawing fouls and hitting the free throws. She has the ability to do all of those things. It is really just the lack of experience, some things you just have to go through and learn how to handle them. It is all a process.
We play on the road again Tuesday night at Akron, we will be going for our 5th win in a row. Just like the men playing at Western, the Zips are battling to get to Cleveland and these mid week road games are very tough when you include travel and not missing classes.
I need to take my computer in, it was a pain in the butt today. Constantly buffering, then I tried fixing the post with my I-pad at BW’s and it did some strange things as well. So when I got home tonight the computer was finally working as normal. Or it could have been an AI Bot taking over. Hopefully it makes sense now.
It would seem to be that you are trying to describe Miami and Tamar but Miami is not in the top 20 in the nation in ppg.
Also, since Tamar’s injury she has lost a step, just not as fast as she was at the beginning of the year. That may mean that she was the best defender before that injury. I would guess that at some point she will be back to full speed. Maybe she still is the best defender in the league, she had 5 steals yesterday, and that is very subjective, but I think those comments came before her injury.
Looking over the stats from yesterday, we got solid contributions from several people. Kent outrebounded us in Oxford, but we outrebounded them yesterday 40-36 Part of that is that Tretter played 36 minutes and got 13 rebounds, but there was also more of an emphasis on the guards helping out on the boards and they all contributed.
Enj had 3, Maya 3, Tamar 3, and Nuria 3 in just 4 minutes.
Maya had 18 points and Enjulina had 18, all in the second half. She was not getting good looks in the first half and Coach Box said he changed our offensive sets to give her more space and that certainly worked, plus in the third quarter we got lots of fast breaks with steals or long rebounds and Enj is hard to contain in open court.
Defensively, Kent’s Center Tyler has been turning into a dominating post player this year and Katey got the start and slowed her down, then got two early fouls and left and Tyler got going. Katey was back in the second half and again slowed her down until she fouled out in the last 3 or 4 minutes. Kent’s announcer pointed out her defensive effectiveness several times. Also, Amber guarded Bridget Dunn who hit four 3’s against us in Oxford and also is in the national leaders in defensive rebounds and held her to 8 points and 8 rebounds and 1 three, all below her norms. Also, Maya was given the job of guarding their SR 6-2 wing Jenna Basch who averages just under 17ppg and held her below her average despite giving up a lot of height and length. Tamar disrupted their point guard and she never made a field goal and Tamar had 5 steals.
All year we have been starting Ilse at center and bringing Katey off the bench to help Ilse develop. Then she has missed the last couple of games but came back and played 18 minutes yesterday. With the team winning 4 in a row, and heading down the stretch, it might be time to go with the current starting 5, ilse would still get plenty of time, but maybe we are a little better with Katey in there.
One other thing. Emily Bratton just returned from her injury and practiced twice and Coach inserted her in there and she was good. 9 points in 11 minutes, including the steal and layup that gave us the lead late in the third quarter. She has game.
I agree, Katey should be starting and getting the minutes if she can stay out of foul trouble. Ilse struggles with catching entry passes and her footwork in the post is iffy, leading to traveling calls.
We have an incredibly easy schedule down the stretch. We should be pretty big favorites in 5 of the 6 remaining games. The one exception is at home against a kinda overrated Buffalo team that we should have beaten in the first game on the road. With an active 4 game winning streak, it doesn’t seem totally crazy to think we could finish the regular season on a 10 game winning streak.
By looking at just one game at a time, we would be a favorite in all but the UB home game, and probably just a 2 or 3 point dog there. However, as you well know, if we do it mathematically you would add up the Percentage of likely loss of each of the 6 games and probably get a number rounding off to somewhere between 4 or 5 wins.
Late in the season is not the same as early in the season, teams tend to be either getting better, staying the same, or getting worse. Teams with good coaches are peaking now and most of the teams we are going to play are fighting hard to get to Cleveland ( something we understand well because that is where Miami men’s and women’s teams have been for quite awhile. An example of what often happens at this time of the year is that our men’s team had a 31 point halftime lead on Western and won by 20 in early January. In the postgame interview the Western player said they learned from the second half of the first game that they could take it to them and pound the boards, play hard, and win that way. It worked for them.
In the girls, NIU recently beat Kent at home and Western on the road and had a young player suddenly explode and win a POW honor. EMU is 0-12, Ball State is 12-0. Saturday at Eastern they lost by just 5 points to Ball State. OU, who we recently lost to us by 38 in Oxford, lost at home by just 12 to UB. The biggest game for every Bobcat team is Miami at home and they will be well prepared and ready. We also lost the first time around to CMU. I am just saying that it would be a bad bet to bet even money that we win 6 more games in a row. But I had also been thinking that it is possible when you look at it one game at a time. It would be an especially tough task for a lineup so inexperienced in going through a season.