There’s no getting around the fact that it’s been a long couple of months for the Detroit Mercy women’s basketball team. After coming out on top in their first two Horizon League contests, it’s been much harder to find a silver lining since then. The Titans have dealt with being shorthandedness and not being able to play a full 40 minutes at the level that they would have liked or needed to. Prior to their game this past week against Oakland, round two against the Golden Grizzlies, they had lost 11 games in a row and 13 of their past 14. Despite this, head coach Kiefer Haffey stressed taking the same mentality into each day, regardless of wins or losses.
“The reality is that I don’t think you can focus on the streak, good or bad. The mindset has to be whether you win or lose, we have practice today and we [have to] ask ourselves, ‘how do we get better?’” Haffey said. “It’s hard when you’re getting punched in the face, but I think the approach has been to see how we can get better in order to prepare for whatever we’re doing next.”
Even with attempting to have a positive approach to coming to work each day, losing is always hard. Winning may not solve everything in sports, but it sure helps a lot of things, and the Titans couldn’t seem to find one no matter how each game went.
That all changed on Saturday.
The red, white, and blue, in dire need of a win to carry some momentum down the home stretch of the regular season, got exactly that in a 72-69 decision over Horizon League archrival Oakland in the OU Credit Union O’rena on Saturday. The win marked their first since December 21st. Detroit Mercy withstood a fourth-quarter comeback from the Golden Grizzlies that erased a 59-48 Titan lead. Tied at 65 with 3:20 left, the Titans had a chance to do what they had failed to do for all of 2026 so far: Finish a game.
Thanks to buckets from seniors Myonna Hooper and Jasmine Edwards, the Titans regained the lead with just over a minute left, before senior transfer Kailee Davis scored the last points of the game on a layup of her own. A couple of defensive stops inside the final minute propelled them to the much-needed W.
The Titans were able to hold off a 33-point performance from freshman Makenzie Luehring, which added to a streak of five 20-plus point games for the young Oakland standout. UDM countered with five double-digit scorers, led by Davis, who has really come on of late. She had 20 points, and Edwards notched an 11-point 14-rebound double-double. She added five steals to her all-around solid outing. Hooper also contributed 13 points, five assists and four rebounds.
Haffey was confident himself when speaking on the confidence that the win would give his team as we enter the final stretch of the season, and part of that is due to adjustments that the Titans have had to make throughout the season.
“We’ve cleaned up over the last couple of weeks what we’re doing on offense,” he said. “We were doing a lot of different things throughout the course of the year, and it got to a point where we didn’t feel like we were doing many of them very well. So, we took a few of the things that we were doing, said, ‘Hey, let’s simplify things a little bit, do a couple things, and do them better.’”
The main thing that he’d still like his team to continue to improve upon would be becoming a better rebounding unit.
As sweet as the win was, the Titans aren’t done, and no one is lacking belief. Haffey, as mentioned earlier, talked about going into each day just trying to get better, win or lose. As nice as this mindset is from a coach, this same sentiment is echoed by players too, though. Nisea Burrell, new to the Titans this year, stressed a main point of optimism that she has held throughout her final season of college basketball.
“Just being able to come in everyday and show up for one another,” she said. “We just want to take it one game at a time, one day at a time. We also need to just continue locking in on the little details and staying focused.”
Regardless of how the season for any team has gone, all that a squad wants is to be playing their best basketball come February and March. No team that’s still focused on that fact should be overlooked, and the Titans are ready to build some momentum down the stretch.
Next Up
Detroit Mercy will now return to Calihan Hall for a three-game homestand. The first of those games will be tomorrow evening when they take on Wright State at 7:00 PM. They’ll be back at it two days later when they play host to Purdue Fort Wayne at 1:00 PM on Saturday to round out the week. Both are available to stream on ESPN+.
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