The women's basketball team was on a mission to end a nine game losing streak to the Kent State Golden Flashes Tuesday night in Kent State.
They came away with another disappointing loss to a conference rival that always has their number.
In a surprising show of outside shooting by the Golden Flashes, the UB Bulls fell 71-56 to their conference rivals at the MAC Center. The Golden Flashes hit 7 of 11 three-pointers in the first half, despite being eighth in the conference in that statistic, at 29 percent.
"At home, they shoot a lot better than they do on the road," Bulls head coach Cheryl Dozier told WWKB radio after the game. "We just gave up a lot of key offensive rebounds. The shot clock runs down, they jack up the shot, we give up an offensive rebound."
Kent State senior Valerie Zona began the game by sinking two three-pointers to start off a 10-2 run, involving three Buffalo turnovers. Turnovers would be key in the game, as Buffalo would give up 22 points to Kent on 21 turnovers over the course of the night.
"It's turnovers that really, really hurt us tonight," Dozier said.
Buffalo had difficulty getting past Kent State's full-court press at first, but they soon began to mount a comeback by passing through the air and using a speedy transition game. By 10:26 of the first half, Buffalo had tied the game and would lead 25-21 with 8:26 remaining. Rachel Martin gave UB that lead from a jumper, which was her only field goal of the game.
There was no illusion to Kent State's accuracy, though, and with big three-pointers from senior Morgan O'Hara, they took a nine point lead into the locker room.
Kent State began to cool down during the second half, but unfortunately so did UB, going nearly eight minutes without scoring a field goal during a stretch of the second half. That wasn't before strong efforts by Bulls sophomore Allison Bennett and junior Jessica Kochendorfer got the game within six, at 51-45 with 10:11 to play.
Then it started to turn south. From 10:11 until 1:11, the only points scored by UB were free throws, this while being in double bonus territory for a time. UB went back and forth from a 3-2 zone to a man-to-man coverage, which helped keep the Golden Flashes at bay, but UB could not capitalize and Kent finally put the game away.
Kent State finished going 11-22 from beyond the arc, giving up the ball only four times in comparison to UB's 21 turnovers.
Leading UB with points was Kochendorfer with 14, followed by Bennett with 13 and senior Kate McMeeken-Ruscoe with 10. Bennett had a team-high five assists, while Kochendorfer had a team-high eight rebounds.
Leading Kent State was forward Jamie Rubis with 19 points, O'Hara with eight assists and Katalin Kollat with nine rebounds.
UB next plays Northern Illinois on Sunday Feb. 9 at 4 p.m. in Alumni Arena. The Huskies defeated Buffalo in the first round of the MAC Tournament last season. The game will be broadcast live on the Empire Sports Network.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
