Missed layups cost CMU women chance to advance

• Tweet
• 

CLEVELAND — Brandie Baker got a steal and rushed down the court for an easy layup with 4:21 remaining.

But it didn’t fall. She put a little too much on it, and watched it roll off the front of the rim during Friday’s Mid-American Conference semifinal game against Bowling Green at Quicken Loans Arena.

The Central Michigan women’s basketball team was down just five to Bowling Green. The Chippewas used a 9-0 run to cut into a 14-point deficit, and Baker’s miss on a two-on-one fast break would have cut it to three.

“We got it down to five, and miss a layup,” said CMU coach Sue Guevara. “You could just see the body language.”

CMU never recovered. Bowling Green gained life. The Falcons went on a 10-4 run to put the game out of reach in the final minutes.

The sophomore guard Baker, one Guevara called a matchup nightmare for opponents just days prior at the conclusion of the MAC quarterfinal win against Buffalo, finished with 15 points and seven rebounds Friday.

She shot just 7-of-19 (36.8 percent), however, and missed on a number of easy baskets.

Freshman forward Taylor Johnson said the problem was team-wide.

“We should have made so many more layups than we did,” she said. “I mean, it’s a 2-foot shot, and I would take a layup over a 3 any day.”

But CMU couldn’t capitalize on its easy looks.

Guevara said she thinks the team made it harder on itself as well when opportunity wasn’t there.

“I thought we were impatient today,” said Guevara, who said she still expects her team to get an invite to the NIT. “I thought we played a lot of one-on-one, and put up a lot of circus-acrobatic, poor layup shots.”

The Chippewas shot just 33.3 percent.