Miami 10-17 (5-9). NIU is 14-11 (6-8). We beat Northern on the road 74-69 earlier this season. However, Northern is coming off an incredible week, first winning at first place BG 85-81, BG’s first home loss of the season, then knocking off first place Ball State 84-77 in DeKalb on Saturday. Earlier in the year they beat Toledo in DeKalb. They are the only one of the other 9 teams to beat any of the three teams tied for first at 11-2, and they have beaten all 3. We have beaten NIU two in a row, mainly because we have shut down A’jah Davis, NIU’s outstanding big girl. We talk abut double doubles, but Davis has had 5 straight games where she had 15 or more points and 15 or more rebounds. She is 4th in the country in rebounding at 12.6rpg. Like our men do, NIU often runs their offense through Davis, who is an excellent passer and a powerful girl who knows how to use her body to protect her power hooks.
Northern has two other scorers to be aware of. Chelby Koker has averaged 20 in the past, but is at 16ppg this season. J. Poisson does not start but is a great shooter who averages in double figures off the bench. She is a perfect 26 for 26 on free throws and had 62 threes.
Both teams are battling to get to Cleveland and get the best possible seed. We are currently in a 3 way tie for 7th, 8th, and 9th, NIU is one win ahead of us and tied for 5th and 6th. The bottom 8 teams in the MAC all have 4,5, or 6 wins with 4 games still to play.
For Miami, Wolf 6th, Scott 9th, and Cluse 12th are all in the top 12 scorers in the MAC. Wolf leads the MAC in ft%.Scott scored her 1800th career point on Saturday and now is about 400 points behind Lauren Dickerson for first in Miami History. Maddie Cluse has been our leading scorer the last couple of games.
MAC standings… Top 8 make it to Cleveland
BG 12-2
UT 12-2
BSU 12-2
Kent 9-5
NIU 6-8
UA 6-8
EMU 5-9
MU 5-9
WM 5-9
UB 4-10
CMU 4-10
Ohio 4-10
Great game by our RedHawks tonight. Since there was no game thread, maybe nobody watched it, but you should take the time to watch the replay. I would say this was the best we have played this year, probably the best game in Coach Hendrix 4 years. The team actually seemed locked in most of the night, their was a good gameplan and it was well executed. I could still come up with 15 or 20 things which happened which need to be corrected, but we played at a high level. So much of the game is mental and being alert and focused and it seems like the girls are finally getting it.
It was one of the few times when our 3 stars were all playing well and stayed out of foul trouble all night. Peyton Scott had 26, Ivy Wolf 22, and Maddie Cluse with another double double with 18 points and 13 rebounds. Sierra Morrow added 11 points. NIU’s A’Jah Davis had 21 points and drew 9 fouls from Freeman and Richason and had 21 points, but she only had 7 rebounds and that allowed us to control the boards. We executed well which led to a lot of layups and open shots and that led to a season high 60% free throw percentage and a season high 86 points. 4-0 over the last 4 days for the men and women and I am starting to remember just how much fun this game can be.
The tiebreaker has always been head to head, unless it was changed this year. So we would have the tiebreaker with NIU. Now 3 way tiebreakers are more involved.
I think the answer to that is that they can do this again many times in the future( since everybody on the team has eligibility remaining and I think they will all be back). I do not think they had the individual ability, knowledge, focus, and experience to do these things earlier. Many of the players are doing things now that could not do earlier. I don’t think the coaches always identified issues and corrected them until some of us pointed out and complained about things on this site and then some of those things started to improve. There have been lots of things that needed to be fixed and one by one many of them have been improved, but not all. At the same time, other teams in the MAC are going through the same process. So Coach Hendrix would always say that we are getting better and I agreed with that, but other teams also get better as the season goes on. We have been healthy, which is not true for a couple of other teams. Scott in particular is contributing so much more than earlier in the season. Amani Freeman can now do all kinds of things she did not used to be able to do. Richason and Watkins are holding their own now, that did not happen earlier.
We have made a big jump in mental focus which has always been subpar with this group. They seem to finally understand the importance of the scouting report and playing to it. There are fewer dumb passes and careless turnovers and missed defensive assignments. So we will see how it goes the last 3 games. We play 3 teams that we lost to earlier and 2 of those are on the road and the home game is first place Ball State who beat us by 30. I do think we can win any or all of those games if we are dedicated and focused and prepare well. At this point we are in a 4 way tie for 5,6,7,and 8 th place, but I think we can still finish anywhere from 5th to last. This is a very important end of the season for both the coaching staff and the players.
