Women's basketball comes up short against Toledo
Coming off of a week to prepare, the Central Michigan women's basketball team was looking to stay solid on defense and find offensive consistency against Toledo on Saturday.
CMU found themselves in a back and fourth battle right up until the finish, but fell to the Rockets 74-72, dropping their second straight Mid-American Conference game and third consecutive to UT.
Sophomore guard Presley Hudson was called for a charge with six seconds to play, and then senior forward Jewel Cotton missed a jump shot for a chance to tie the game and send it to overtime.
Head Coach Sue Guevara said her team fought all game long, but there was one statistic that killed them during the contest.
"We did battle back all game long and played the best we could," she said. "However, we gave up too many offensive rebounds. When you give up 21 offensive boards and allow 22 points off of them, you won't win that's for sure."
The Chippewas (14-6 overall, 6-2 MAC) stayed in third place in the MAC West Division, and fell to 2-5 in road games, losing back-to-back games for the first time all season.
One positive for the Chippewas was junior forward Tinara Moore, who lead CMU in scoring for the third consecutive game. She had 33 points on 10-for-18 shooting from the field while adding eight rebounds and two blocks.
Moore went 11-for-13 from the free throw line, with most of those shots coming down the stretch to keep her team in the game.
"Right now Tinara (Moore) is the only weapon that we have on offense," Guevara said. "If we want to win, we're going to need a whole lot more than one player doing the scoring. We are struggling against physical teams and missing open shots when we have them."
Every time the Chippewas would put together a run, the Rockets had an answer. CMU ended the third quarter on a 15-3 run to take a 57-52, but then Toledo answered with a 10-2 run of their own to open the fourth quarter, which made it close until the end of the game.
Once again, CMU shot under their season average in shooting percentage on the road. The Chippewas shot 39.6 percent from the field and just 30 percent (6-for-20) from beyond the arc.
The Chippewas were out-rebounded 40-38 and and turned the ball over 18 times compared to Toledo’s 14 turnovers. Seven of those turnovers came from Hudson, who finished with nine points on 2-for-10 shooting.
Junior guard Aleah Swary was the only other Chippewa to finish in double-figures.She added 11 points to go along with five rebounds and two steals.
CMU will take on Ohio (16-4, 7-2 MAC) Wednesday at 6 p.m. at McGuirk Arena.
