Green misses 3-pointer, women’s basketball falls to Kentucky
With three seconds left in the game, Jessica Green took what she hoped was the game-tying 3-pointer for the Central Michigan University women’s basketball team.
It missed .The women fell to the University of Kentucky 71-68 on Saturday at McGuirk Arena.
The Chippewas (1-1) loss to the 10th ranked Wildcats (4-0) ended their 12-game regular season home winning streak.
“I just thought shoot it,” said Green of her potentially tying 3-point jumper. “I just knew it was seconds left, and I just had to shoot it."
Green’s shot was set up by the rebound of another senior guard, Crystal Bradford.
“I thought I was open, but I thought somebody was still trailing,” Green said. “I didn’t care. I was still going to shoot it anyway. My teammates said it was a good shot. That was the shot I had to take.”
The Chippewas came back from a 47-28 halftime deficit.
The Chippewas were a completely different team in the second half. CMU outscored Kentucky 40-24 and outrebounded the Wildcats 26-15 in the last period of the game.
The Chippewas switched to a zone defense in the second half, which slowed Kentucky’s fast-paced offense.
“I felt like their point guards didn’t practice that,” CMU freshman Cassandra Breen said. “They really started to get scrambled. You could see it on their faces.”
The women continued to compete every time it appeared that the Wildcats had thrown the knockout blow and were going to pull away.
“We battled,” CMU coach Sue Guevara said. “The whole second half was like, one minute we were down six, and then the next minute we’re down 15. When we got it down to six, were able to get some momentum going.”
Trailing by 13 with five minutes to play, the women went on a 10-0 run to trim UK’s lead to 69-66, which was punctuated by a 3-pointer from Breen that sent McGuirk Arena into a frenzy with three minutes left in the game.
“It was step by step by step,” Green said. “We didn’t rush anything.”
Guevara said the team’s poor performance in the first half hurt the women later in the game. The Chippewas shot 28.6 percent from the field and were 1-7 from beyond the arc in the first half.
“I know you can’t win a game in the first half, but you can lose it,” Guevara said. “That’s what happened to us today.”
The women travel to Las Vegas to face Richmond University and the University of Oregon in the Las Vegas Tournament during the Thanksgiving Break.
