The UB Bulls women's basketball team returned to Alumni Arena for their home opener against the Niagara Purple Eagles last Tuesday night intent on showing UB's home crowd what their young team is really made of. It took them an entire half of play to get their act together, but when they finally did they put on quite a show, indeed.
After going into halftime with a mere one-point advantage, the Bulls scored 38 points in the second half to pound Niagara 70-50 in front of a crowd of 814.
It was the Bulls' first win of the regular season and brings their record to 1-2 while the Purple Eagles' record falls to 0-2 for the season.
"We're very successful in this building," said Bulls head coach Cheryl Dozier, "We knew we had to come out with a lot of energy."
Providing that energy was sophomore Jessica Kochendorfer, who led all scores with 18 points and 6 rebounds, followed by junior Kate McMeeken-Ruscoe, who posted a double-double with 11 points and a career-high 14 rebounds. The leading scoring for Niagara was Katie Murphy, who scored 14 points and brought down 3 rebounds.
"She was the big factor," Niagara head coach Bill Agronin said of Kochendorfer. "I thought [the rest of the team] played poised, they played hard."
In the first half, Niagara jumped out to an early lead on a three-pointer by Anne Mimm to make the score 8-4. Buffalo quickly tied, and both teams traded the lead throughout the end of the first half.
UB shot a solid 46 percent in the first half, but committed an inordinate number of turnovers through miscommunication and an unsound passing game. In total, they coughed the ball up 22 times.
"Don't ask me about the turnovers," laughed Dozier. "We'll work on that."
Niagara capitalized on the Bulls' early mistakes and took shots behind the arc, hitting crucial three-pointers right and left. In the first half Niagara shot an impressive 58.2 percent from three-point range.
At the end of the first half the Bulls captured a flimsy 32-31 lead on a big three-point shot by Erin Lawrenson that put them ahead again with little over a minute left.
The second half was a completely different story, however. Scoring followed the first-half pace at first, but completely changed with 10:40 on the clock, when the Bulls put together a startling 15-0 run. Another Kochendorfer field goal brought UB's lead to 55-40.
The team's second-half defense stifled Niagara's shooting percentage, holding the team to a meager 13.2 percent and bringing their game average down to 22 percent. During the Bulls' scoring run, the defense held Niagara scoreless over a span of seven minutes.
"I don't really even want to tell you what I think about that," said Agronin. "I've never in my life seen a team shoot 22 percent."
The Bulls, on the other hand, shot 43 percent for the game and 71 percent on free throws, which factored into extending their lead late in the game. UB finally went up by 20 on Angela Granger's free throws with three seconds left to bring the final score to 70-50.
"I felt our kids got our points penetrating today, instead of relying on outside shots," said Dozier of the team's scoring success. "I liked the distribution of our shots."
"We diagramed some things, we wanted to focus on our strengths while at the same time exploiting their weaknesses," remarked Dozier of her halftime talk with her players. "We felt we had some mismatches."
UB captain Virginia Jennings, who had 11 points and 8 rebounds, felt the team's chemistry has improved since they opened the season with two losses at the Spartan Chevrolet Classic.
"This team plays so hard, it's like we go to war," she said. "I've never been on a team that's so tough as a group."
