COLUMN: Women's basketball ended it's season with more questions than answers
It didn't matter who the Central Michigan women’s basketball team was going up against during the Mid-American Conference portion of the season, you just had a feeling they were going to get the win.
Yet Thursday night, when I went through my normal routine to cover the Women’s National Invitational Tournament game against Wright State, I just had the feeling CMU wouldn't have enough.
In the end, I was right, and CMU is left wondering for a second straight season — what could've been.
It doesn't get more promising heading into the postseason than how the Chippewas were playing.
Coming off being shocked in last year's MAC Tournament, CMU was able to win nine of its final 10 games, finishing 15-3 in the conference, earning its first regular season MAC Championship in 32 years.
The Chippewas also finished with a program record 15 wins at home. CMU was in the top three for field goal, 3-point, and free-throw shooting percentage in the MAC.
From a players standpoint, from what I could see and still firmly believe, this team took every challenge they had to heart and took it personally. They wanted to win more than anything else.
However, when the pressure dialed up, they weren't able to answer the call.
The Chippewas weren't able to protect a six-point lead with just 1:20 remaining in the MAC quarterfinal round against Western Michigan, allowing a 10-0 Bronco run to end the game, and letting the win slip through their fingers. That was unlike anything they had done all season.
Then in the WNIT, CMU again had a 64-61 lead with just 2:14 between them and their first ever postseason win outside of the MAC Tournament.
Instead of finishing like they did for most of the season, the Chippewas allowed five unanswered points and missed a gimme layup to tie the game at the horn, which ended their season.
So now, they are left with questions that have no answer again: What happens if they win against WSU? What happens if they don’t turn the ball over and finish against WMU?
Unfortunately for them, they will never know.
“Those last two games (of the season) we played are not how champions play. We didn't play like champions," said head coach Sue Guevara following the loss to Wright State. "That is what is very frustrating – to end the season the way we did with how we played all year. It just doesn't seem right.”
It really doesn’t and if you follow this basketball team you'd know that.
But when it’s March, common sense goes out the window and everything you think you know turns to complete chaos.
Chaos is what hit CMU like a rock and the team didn't have any kind of push to get passed it. The pressure got to this team, and it showed at the end of the games when they couldn't hold leads.
The season wasn't a complete bust, there was plenty of records broken, and CMU will return it’s entire roster outside of senior forwards Jewel Cotton and Jasmine Harris.
The Chippewas had their chances to make history, instead, they will have to wait another year to do so. That’s not how the script was wrote for this season, but sometimes that’s just the way it is.
