#HLWBB Power Rankings — Week 12

Rank	Team	Last	Change
1	Green Bay	1	–
2	Robert Morris	5	+3
3	Purdue Fort Wayne	6	+3
4	Youngstown State	4	–
5	Northern Kentucky	2	-3
6	Cleveland State	3	-3
7	IU Indianapolis	7	–
8	Oakland	8	–
9	Milwaukee	9	–
10	Wright State	10	–
11	Detroit Mercy	11	–

Green Bay gave up an 18-2 run to Detroit Mercy on Saturday, and only led the Titans by an eyebrow-raising 34-30 early in the third quarter. However, that’s about the only drama that the Phoenix faced in cruising to a pair of home victories that were a bit more competitive than expected, but still fairly routine. Behind Maddy Skorupski’s season-high 22 points and an 11-10 double-double from Jenna Guyer, GB restored its double-digit lead roughly five minutes after that UDM run ended, eventually logging a 72-61 win. Skorupski scored 19 against her old Oakland team on Thursday (making it 40 total in this season’s two games against OU), as Green Bay surged to a 21-7 advantage nine minutes into the game, and never truly looked back. The Phoenix are now just eight wins away from a perfect conference season.

How tightly-packed is the Horizon League’s second tier, following Green Bay? Consider that one week ago, Robert Morris was probably the least-consistent member of the group, a status that placed the Colonials closer to the end of the list than the beginning. Now, after dominant wins over Youngstown State and Wright State (along with some scoreboard help), RMU is tied for second place, with a 7-4 HL mark. Knocking off the Penguins on Wednesday, in a 55-40 rock fight, gave the Colonials a 3-2 record against YSU, Purdue Fort Wayne, Northern Kentucky, and Cleveland State. It also involved holding their northwestern neighbors to just 15-for-50 (a clean 30 percent) shooting, including 3-for-18 (17 percent) from three-point range. A now-healthy Ava Leroux has done wonders for Chandler McCabe’s post rotation – she had 12 points and eight rebounds against the Guins, then followed that up with a career-high 19 tallies and another eight boards versus WSU on Saturday.

Purdue Fort Wayne emphatically ended a three-game skid with a pair of high-quality wins over the last week, including at home against Cleveland State and on the road at Northern Kentucky. The latter, on Saturday, was far and away the more compelling of the two. The Mastodons were led by a career-high 27 points from freshman Rylee Bess, but nevertheless trailed by three in the final 30 seconds of the fourth quarter, until Lili Krasovec converted an and-one play. That, combined with a subsequent stop, was enough to force an ultimately-fruitful overtime period. Alana Nelson logged a workmanlike 16 points and eight rebounds against the Norse, but was just about unstoppable in the mid-week triumph over CSU. In that contest, the former NAIA All-American hit nine of her 12 field goal attempts (including a 4-for-5 effort from three-point range) on the way to 23 points. She was also a prominent part of a team-wide 7-for-7 start that had the ‘Dons on the front foot from the opening tip.

Youngstown State throttled rival Cleveland State 61-38 on Sunday, an important win for the Penguins on the heels of losing consecutive games for the first time all season, including that clunker at Robert Morris on Wednesday. Danielle Cameron took the top off of the Vikings with five three-pointers among her 17 points, though the more impressive aspect of the victory was a defense that held CSU below 30 percent shooting, while limiting Izabella Zingaro, Colbi Maples, and Macey Fegan to a combined 13 points. The result places the Penguins right back among the leaders of the group chasing the Horizon League’s second seed, and with arguably the easiest remaining schedule of the bunch. Casey Santoro scored 19 of Youngstown State’s 40 points at RMU on 50 percent shooting, but obviously didn’t have a ton of help.

Simply put, it wasn’t an amazing week for Northern Kentucky, which saw its seven-game winning streak evaporate with losses to IU Indianapolis and Purdue Fort Wayne – results that were enough to send the Norse tumbling from second place to fifth. One point of particular agony was the fact that NKU led both games within the final 90 seconds of regulation, but simply came up on the short end of several decisive plays down the stretch each time. Nevertheless, Karina Bystry continued her outstanding rookie season in the overtime loss to the Mastodons. The Tennessee native scored 35 points, setting a new Division I-era school record, while establishing a new high-water mark for Horizon League players this season. She also scored 18 times in Northern Kentucky’s shocking loss to the Jaguars, though classmate Maddie Moody paced the Norse with 19 that day.

After extremely ugly road losses to Purdue Fort Wayne and Youngstown State, Cleveland State is now much closer to teams like IU Indianapolis and Oakland than to the likes of the Mastodons and Penguins. That’s not a subjective call; the Vikings are only one-half game clear of eighth place in the standings, with a 5-6 Horizon League mark. All isn’t lost for CSU, which is just over one week removed from an impressive win over Robert Morris, but it is a bit alarming that the Vikings could barely slow down PFW on Wednesday, before managing just 38 points against the Guins just four days later. A home game against Milwaukee coming up on Wednesday is virtually a must-win, given that Cleveland State’s following six contests involve IU Indy twice, Northern Kentucky, Green Bay, and rematches with the Colonials and ‘Dons.

Far from resting on any sort of “hey, we’re actually good” credibility that might have come from January 17th’s victory over Youngstown State, IU Indianapolis came right back and stunned Northern Kentucky in The Jungle on Wednesday. The result, which tossed water on the then-scorching Norse, came about largely thanks to Olivia Smith’s backloaded 23 points. NKU went ahead 69-67 with 1:29 remaining, but Smith went on to score eight of the game’s final nine, while the Jaguars earned stops on four of Northern Kentucky’s final five possessions. Smith, one of the HL’s emergent stars, now has at least 16 tallies in each of her last four games, and has crept within the top 15 scorers in the conference. The Jags remain two full games behind NKU for the final second-round home game in the league tournament, but that might not prove much of an obstacle with the way they’re playing.

Oakland exited the week with what’s generally considered a passable trip to Wisconsin: a reasonably-competitive loss to Green Bay, and a solid victory over Milwaukee. That win over the Panthers on Saturday was keyed by Filippa Goula, who bucketed a career-high 21 points on 8-for-14 shooting, including four three-pointers. Makenzie Luehring, meanwhile, continued her case for Horizon League freshman honors, with 25 points, six rebounds, and five assists, helping OU take definitive control of the contest with a 19-2 run bridging halftime. A 14-point defeat in the Kress Center, as the Golden Grizzlies experienced on Thursday, certainly isn’t cause for embarrassment, and it’s worth noting that Oakland played the Phoenix on even terms for 31 minutes after a slow start. Luehring (15 points), Lianna Baxter (16), and Layla Gold (12, with nine rebounds) led OU’s effort that day.

Given the improved fortunes of both IU Indy and Oakland (not to mention the glut of teams ahead of those two), it’s getting difficult to see Milwaukee earning a favorable conference tournament seed. The Panthers split a pair of home games this past week, beating Detroit Mercy and losing to Oakland, to move to 3-8 in Horizon League play. Notably, UWM is now done playing the pair of Michigan schools, and the fact that they swept the Titans while being swept by the Golden Grizzlies should offer a dose of clarity to the always-chaotic stretch run of the regular season. Despite that loss to OU on Saturday, underrated guard Grace Lomen was outstanding, establishing a new career high with 27 points on 10-for-13 shooting, including 7-for-8 from three-point range, as the Panthers’ late push came up short. Jorey Buwalda offered a sturdy 21-and-10 effort to the victory over the Titans on Thursday.

Rescheduling its home contest with Robert Morris from Sunday to Saturday helped Wright State avoid Winter Storm Fern, but it couldn’t help the Raiders avoid a tenth defeat in their last 11 games (with the sole win, as luck would have it, coming against Detroit Mercy, the only team behind them in these power rankings). Unlike the Titans, however, WSU didn’t stockpile any moral victories while losing. In fact, in that game, Wright State led 22-18 early in the second quarter…then didn’t score for the next twelve minutes and thirty-eight seconds (spelled out for emphasis), as the Colonials took control of the afternoon with a 23-0 run. Lauren Scott had a nice day with 15 points on 6-for-11 shooting, including a trio of threes, but her teammates only managed to hit 30 percent of their shots.

Detroit Mercy’s losing streak is now up to nine games, after the Titans went 0-for-2 in Wisconsin. The skid – which began with a rather embarrassing defeat to local NAIA opponent Rochester Christian on December 29th – has plummeted UDM to the bottom of the conference standings with a 2-9 HL mark (most of a 4-16 overall record). Undoubtedly, one of the truly frustrating things about Detroit Mercy’s misfortunes is that, most of the time, the Titans haven’t played all that poorly. In fact, they only lost to league-leading Green Bay by 11 points in their gym, while demonstrating the sort of depth that’s typically necessary to upend the Phoenix. That depth included seven different players hit who at least two field goals, led by Nisea Burrell and Jasmine Edwards. Unfortunately for Kiefer Haffey’s crew, UDM’s final nine games don’t offer much of a reprieve.

Player of the Week

Olivia Smith (IU Indianapolis)

This week offered another competitive awards field, so why not go with Smith, the most notorious player on (arguably) the conference’s biggest story at the moment? The Ball State transfer has scored 16 or more points in each of her last four games, leading the surging Jaguars towards the top half of the standings.

Also considered: Maddy Skorupski (Green Bay), Makenzie Luehring (Oakland), Ava Leroux (Robert Morris), Rylee Bess (Purdue Fort Wayne), Alana Nelson (Purdue Fort Wayne)

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