COLUMN: One half may have saved CMU's season
After Central Michigan women's basketball's 80-61 win against Miami (OH) on Jan. 18, Cassie Breen summed up what the team needed to do in order to keep having success.
“Bowling Green was definitely a wake-up call for us,” Breen said after the Miami game. “We needed to play better defense. It’s no secret we have struggled to guard the 3-point shot. I think tonight we did just that, and need to keep playing like this on the road.”
Breen was right.
That’s what CMU “needed” to do, but the Chippewas couldn't put a complete game together for either road game after that, losing to Buffalo and Toledo.
While the Chippewas didn't play horrible defense, they couldn't find the bottom of the net as a team as they fell to 2-5 on the road.
It was starting to really look like this team had no solutions when it came to not playing in their own gym.
While junior forward Tinara Moore was a bright spot during both losses, no one else on the team was able to find much success shooting at all.
CMU went 1-for-15 from 3-point range against Buffalo, and no starter besides Moore scored in double figures against Toledo.
After falling to third place in the Mid-American Conference West Division, the Chippewas needed answers with just 10 regular season games left.
One half of basketball may have changed the entire look of the 2016-17 campaign for the Central Michigan women’s basketball team.
Easy wasn't exactly the word to describe the next opponent the Chippewas had to face after dropping two consecutive games in late January.
The first-place MAC-East division leading Ohio Bobcats came to McGuirk Arena riding a four-game win streak.
It was starting to look like more of the same story in the first half, CMU was shooting just 29 percent from the field and trailed the Bobcats 29-24 heading to the locker room.
Whatever was said at halftime worked to perfection. CMU came out of the break playing with its hair on fire, opening the second half on a 10-3 run and hitting three triples in the third quarter.
Moore had zero points in the first half, but scored 18 in the second. When the pressure was on, CMU didn't back off. The Chippewas shot a single-game program record 16-for-16 from the free-throw line, with eight of those coming in the final minute.
With a three-point lead and less than 10 seconds left, Ohio had a chance to inbound the ball and tie the game. Instead, Breen was there to force a turnover and seal the win for CMU.
This time, four Chippewas finished in double figures, but scoring didn't tell what truly made this second half stick out in my eyes.
It was a determination that I haven’t seen all season long.
There was a look of purpose in their step, the Chippewas knew they had to have this win, and then went right out in that second half and scrapped together everything it took to get it.
What head coach Sue Guevara said after the game, couldn't have been more truthful.
“I think that we lost a couple of games and all of the sudden everyone is playing mind games with themselves,” Guevara said. “So yeah, this is good momentum for us, but we need to stop screwing up our own mind and just keep shooting.”
Heading back on the road, no one was certain what to expect because the Chippewas looked like a completely different team away from McGuirk Arena almost every time.
That second half against Ohio changed something, it gave the Chippewas the confidence they have been searching for.
CMU went to Ypsilanti and blew the doors right off of Eastern Michigan, 104-63. Every single-player on CMU’s active roster scored. Six Chippewas scored in double figures.
It was the most impressive road performance I’ve seen all year out of them, but that left an important question: What could CMU do with a win like this going into a MAC-West showdown against Northern Illinois.
If you ask me, they put together their most impressive win of the entire season, and found an Identity doing so.
The Chippewas went on a 23-3 run in the second quarter against the Huskies, taking a 55-29 lead into the locker room.
NIU is a team that comes out and scores quickly, and CMU outplayed them on their home floor, eventually winning with its highest point total this year, 109-94.
Again, CMU used a team effort to get the win. The Chippewas out-rebounded the Huskies 58-30, as sophomore forward Reyna Frost (24 points, 18 rebounds) and Moore (16 points, 10 rebounds) had double-double performances.
“You look at our team, what are you going to take away? If you take away our 3-ball, then you get 55 points in the paint,” Guevara said. “If you take away the paint, then you’ll get the 3-ball.”
Guevara is right. Right now, you can't stop this team.
For a team that looked completely lost about two weeks ago, this three-game win streak has completely flipped the script.
When in-state rival Western Michigan comes to town on Saturday, I would expect more of the same, and I don’t see that changing anytime in the near future.
