The Youngstown State women’s basketball team (11-5, 4-2 Horizon) recorded its worst offensive night of the season, and suffered a tough 61-49 defeat against the Northern Kentucky Norse (7-11, 4-3 Horizon) on Thursday night at Zidian Family Arena at Beeghly Center. The Penguins had their four-game winning streak snapped, while the Norse have coincidentally now won four straight games of their own.
NKU missed their first five shots of the night, allowing the Penguins to take an early 5-0 lead with a Danielle Cameron three and a Sarah Baker layup. However, the Norse came back to score six unanswered points and took a one-point lead courtesy of a Karina Bystry bucket and back-to-back layups from Maddie Moody. During that stretch, the Penguins missed 14 straight shot attempts before Erica King gave them the 7-6 advantage on a pair of made free throws with 9.1 seconds to go before the period ended.
Youngstown State scored eight of the first 12 second-quarter points by making their first four shot attempts and ended up with a 15-10 lead thanks to a jumper from Hayden Barrier, two buckets from Baker, and a turnaround shot from King at the 8:01 mark. Later in the quarter, Cameron buried her second triple of the first half to give YSU a five-point lead at 19-14 before NKU’s Taysha Rushton and YSU’s Casey Santoro traded buckets to keep it a five-point affair at 21-16 with 3:16 to go before intermission.
NKU scored the next six unanswered points for their first lead of the night at 22-21 with consecutive buckets from Abby Wolterman, Mya Meredith, and Jamaya Thomas. Santoro and Bystry then traded shots before a Thomas free throw made it a 25-23 NKU advantage with eight seconds left before the intermission, but a pair of free throws by Cameron tied the game at the 1.1 second mark. As a result, both teams entered the locker room knotted up at 25.
The Penguins and Norse traded baskets to start the second half, starting with a Wolterman layup and back-to-back buckets from Baker to make it 29-27 Youngstown State. Then, Moody and Sophia Gregory exchanged three-point plays, and YSU was still up 32-30 at the 7:37 mark. NKU, who missed their first dozen attempts on three-pointers, scored the next seven unanswered points to take a 37-32 lead with 5:48 to go in the quarter, thanks to buckets from Moody and the team’s first trey of the night coming from Bystry in between.
YSU answered with a 10-4 run to come back and regain the lead at 42-41 over the next 5:26 with four made free throws in six attempts from Paulina Hernandez, followed up with a three from King and three more made foul shots made by Cameron, but Kamora Morgan hit a go-ahead jump shot with six seconds remaining in the quarter to give NKU a slight 43-42 advantage heading into the fourth quarter. Through the first three stanzas of the contest, the two teams scratched and clawed through six ties and 11 lead changes.
The Penguins switched from a man-to-man defense to a zone defense to begin the fourth stanza, after Northern Kentucky made just one three in 15 attempts from deep in the first 30 minutes of the night, but NKU turned it around, with Morgan’s shot at the end of the third quarter contributing to a 11-0 run that mostly transpired in the fourth period. A pair of clutch longballs from Noelle Hubert and free throws from Moody put the Norse up 51-42 at the 5:33 mark.
YSU missed their first 11 shot attempts of the fourth quarter, before a layup from King made it a seven-point deficit at 51-44, but Morgan nailed the Norse’s third three-ball of the quarter to put them up by 10, at 54-44, with 4:52 to go in the game.
After Baker made a midrange shot, NKU hit four of the game’s next five made free throws, with a pair from Moody, countered by one from YSU’s Hernandez, and answered back with two more from Mya Meredith to make it 58-47 at the 2:14 mark.
King made the Penguins’ last field goal of the game with a jumper to cut the deficit down to three possessions at 58-49 with 2:04 left in regulation, but NKU pushed the lead to a dozen in the game’s final 1:49 with a Wolterman layup and a Rushton free throw to put the cream cheese on the bagel.
Jeff Hans’ NKU squad outrebounded Youngstown State 41-38 and not only scored 20 second-chance points off a dozen offensive rebounds, but also recorded a plus-20 margin in points in the paint (38-18). As a team, Northern Kentucky shot 39.3 percent (24-of-61) from the field, 19 percent (4-of-19) on threes, and 69.2 percent (9-of-13) at the foul line.
Moody, the reigning Horizon League Freshman of the Week, led all scorers with 17 points on 6-of-10 shooting from the field and a perfect 5-for-5 from the line. Wolterman, a former Jaguar at IU Indianapolis, recorded her third-career double-double and second in a Norse uniform with 10 points and 11 rebounds, while making five of her seven shot attempts.
Youngstown State made a solid 73.7 percent (14-of-19) of their free throws, but shot a season-low 27.1 percent (16-of-59) from the floor and just 10.7 percent (3-of-28) from three-point territory.
“I thought we took too many threes,” Penguins head coach Melissa Jackson said after the game. “I thought some of them were good. I thought we got a little three happy. Obviously, when you’re trying to come back, you want to try to hit some threes there. But I thought throughout the course of the game, we could have drove it, I thought Dani [Cameron] did a better job in the second half of doing that. But definitely a little three happy, tried to get the ball inside. Right from the jump, I think their game plan was to double us. We saw that, and then I think it affected us a little bit later on in the game. I think our posts were a little concerned about that, and honestly, we didn’t get stops. So much of our game and our transition comes down to rebounding and running, and I give Northern Kentucky a lot of credit because they crashed the offensive glass and won that battle. I know the rebounding right there isn’t too much in their favor, but 20 second chance points, 38 points in the paint, we’re not gonna win many basketball games with that.”
Baker’s dozen points led the Penguins, and she shot 6-of-10 from the field while pulling down seven rebounds. “We shot it really good on Monday, so it’s like, ‘Sometimes, shots don’t fall,'” the redshirt freshman said regarding YSU’s bad shooting night. “I thought we got looks that we usually get, and it’s just unfortunate that today, we weren’t hitting. There’s really nothing you can do when shots aren’t falling.”
In addition to Baker, King and Cameron finished with 11 points each. For just the second time this season and third time in her first two NCAA seasons, King played all 40 minutes.
Up next: Youngstown State closes out a four-game homestand by hosting Horizon League second-place team Purdue Fort Wayne on Saturday, January 10 for a 2 p.m. tip-off at Zidian Family Arena at Beeghly Center.
James Moon (CashApp): $JRMoon1991
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