Women's basketball rolls past Miami for sixth straight win
This week, the focus for Head Coach Sue Guevara and her team was to play better overall defense, by committing less turnovers and guarding the 3-point shot better.
Miami (Oh) went 7-for-21 from 3-point range (33.3 percent) and the Chippewas only committed 11 turnovers while forcing 18 to top the Redhawks 80-61 to extend their winning streak to six and remain undefeated in Mid-American Conference play.
Junior forward Tinara Moore led the Chippewas with a double-double. Moore totaled a game-high 23 points on 7-for-15 shooting while adding 10 rebounds and four blocks.
Moore said she felt the balance was very good for her team tonight, and that really opened up the floor for her.
“It was great to see the balance, Presley (Hudson) was struggling a little bit tonight, but she picked it up and Cassie (Breen) helped with that too,” Moore said. “We had four players in double-figures, which gave me more one-on-one opportunities down low.”
After a tightly contested first quarter where the Chippewas came out of the gates slow, they went on a 13-0 run and led 18-14 after the first quarter and led by 44-28 at halftime.
In the second half, the Chippewas controlled the rest of the game leading by more than 20 points most of the way.
Guevara said the evenness of the team was the reason they prevailed.
“The balance of this team, and again it’s been the inside and outside play,” she said. “When the three-ball isn’t going or they are really on our on-ball screens, we were able to find Tinara (Moore) inside and she got it done for us against one-on-one defense tonight.”
Four other Chippewas finished in double-figures in the game.
Junior guard Cassie Breen finished with 17 points while going 3-for-6 from beyond the arc and also added four boards.
Breen said the result tonight came from how they finished the last game on the road.
“Bowling Green was definitely a wake up call for us,” Breen said. “We needed better defense and it's no secret that we are bad at defending the 3-point shot. Being more aggressive on defense is what we tried to do today, and it worked, we got the stops when we needed them.”
Sophomore forward Reyna Frost finished with 14 points while adding seven rebounds.
Hudson finished with 13 points.
Guevara said the officiating got in Hudson’s head tonight, but she found a way to adjust.
"Tonight was one of the nights (Hudson) got frustrated with the officials,” she said. “I talked to her and said I don’t want to see that. I thought she adjusted, and got some short jumpers, and penetrated to get other people the ball and that is what a good point guard does.”
CMU will take on Buffalo at noon on Saturday.
"We have to go to Buffalo and Toledo, and then we have OU (Ohio) at home, and then go to Eastern (Michigan),” Guevara said. “But you know me, if I start looking ahead, I’ll lose focus, the next thing we do is just focus on Buffalo.
"It’s one game at a time.”
