The Northern Michigan University women’s basketball team fell to the Lake Superior State Lakers last Thursday, Feb. 10, 68-46, as the team has now fallen to 9-13 overall and 4-11 in the GLIAC.
“We played well, but Lake State is a good team,” said forward Hillary Bowling. “We have to compete harder.”
The Wildcats got down early after the home team went on a 13-2 run to start the game. Only three players contributed to Northern’s first half score of 16: guard Chelsea Lyons with seven, forward Staci Beckel with six and Bowling added a single bucket from behind the arc for three. However, the Lakers had six different scorers by halftime, including guard Maria Blazejewski, who scored 12 points in the first 20 minutes. The Lakers had also put up a solid defensive effort, as they prevented the wildcats from any getting any free throws, fast break points, second chance points, points from the bench or points off of turnovers.
The second wasn’t much better for the Wildcats. Already down by 20 points, NMU got their first bench points from Jackie Davey a little over three minutes into the final half. The bench played a bigger influence in the second, as Davey, center Erin Powers, and guards Callie Youngman and Nicole Born added 16 points to the Wildcats cause. But LSSU center Cassy Schemberger lit up the scoreboard in the second half as well, shooting a perfect 9-9 combined from the line and the floor for 14 points in the last 20 minutes alone.
Overall, Schemberger led the way for Lake State, as she put in 20 points. Blazejewski had 16 total points and guard Ronlea Peterson added 11 more to lead the Laker offense, as these three starters scored more by themselves (49) than NMU did as a full team. Even though the score for just the second half (LSSU 32-30), the first half hole was too much to recover from.
Northern is 2.5 games behind eight-seeded Tiffin for the last playoff spot with only four games left for the ’Cats. The hopes for playoffs are very slim, as the team needs everything to go right for the last two weekends of the season, including the Dragons and Ferris State to lose their remaining games and Wayne State to defeat FSU tonight in Detroit, but lose their remaining GLIAC games. If any of these teams win, or NMU loses any of their last four, the Wildcats will be eliminated.
“We kind of realized that losses at Wayne State and Lake State were big,” Powers said. “All we can do is play our games and see how the rest of the conference goes.”
The first step in holding onto their playoff chances will be tonight in the second-to-last home for NMU against the Lake Erie Storm. The Storm is having a disappointing conference inaugural season, as it is 3-18 overall and 2-13 in the GLIAC. Last year the Storm finished ninth in the NCAA Midwest regional rankings and ended the season with an 18-9 record as an independent. But according to Bowling, the game starts with the Wildcats offense.
“We need to work as a team, focus on offensive rebounds and simply make our shots,”she said.
On Saturday, the Wildcats will host the Ashland Eagles. Ashland is 15-7 overall and 10-5 in the GLIAC and sitting in first place of the GLIAC South. The game will be senior day for NMU, as it will be the last game played at home for Davey, Powers, Youngman, and guards Kellie Rietveld and Steffani Stoeger.
