When a game is tied with less than four minutes left in the second half, it's usually anybody's game. To Buffalo head coach Linda Hill-MacDonald, Wednesday night's match-up against Central Michigan was over long before that.
Central Michigan's Chassidy Myers tallied 16 points to lead the Chippewas over the Bulls 58-50 at Alumni Arena in a game that wasn't as close as the final score indicated.
"We lost the game in the first five minutes," Hill-MacDonald said.
After the first five minutes, Buffalo was already down by 11 points. The first half didn't get much better after that. At one point in the second half, the Chippewas led by 14 points.
During their 15-4 run to open the game, the Chippewas (13-8 overall, 4-6 Mid-American Conference) recorded four offensive rebounds, three of them in one possession.
Despite being heavily fatigued, the Bulls' poor start did not allow Central Michigan to put them away. With five minutes left in the half, the Bulls (7-14, 2-8 MAC) put together an 8-0 scoring run to go into the locker room at halftime down by just six points. During that run, four different Bulls scored, but that was not an ongoing theme.
In fact, 34 of the Bulls' 50 points came from senior guard Brooke Meunier and sophomore forward Heather Turner.
"I was just trying to be really aggressive down low and work to get open and go and crash the boards," said Turner, who ended with a game-high 20 points and 14 rebounds.
The game was Turner's sixth double-double of the season, a feat she accomplished thanks to second-chance baskets.
"I was very disappointed in her second opportunities," said Central Michigan head coach Eileen Kleinfelter. "We knew she is a very good offensive rebounder, she has as many offensive rebounds as defensive. She missed a couple and we didn't get the box-out on her and she got a couple back and she got the 'and ones.' "
Meunier had the next highest point total with 14 and no other Bull scored more than five points.
The Bulls' concentrated scoring frustrated Turner, who looks for more contribution from the Bulls' backcourt players.
"I don't know what was not working on the outside, but we're going to need more contribution from the outside at times when they're down low double-teaming," Turner said.
The Chippewas were led by Myers, as she was one of three Central Michigan players to notch more than 10 on the night.
"Initially, I knew they were going to zone us," Kleinfelter said. "I didn't want them to zone us, and my team surprised me coming down and hitting all those threes."
CMU shot 58.3 percent from three-point land. This threw the Bulls out of their usual 2-3 zone defense and into their man-to-man defense.
Conversely, the Bulls were unable to convert their shots in the first half, going 9-26 from the field.
"We weren't able to make shots, run the offense, do the things we needed to do," Hill-MacDonald said.
Central Michigan played a very aggressive full-court press intermittently throughout the game, something Hill-MacDonald didn't credit.
"We hurt ourselves because we turned the ball over, but was it due to the pressure?" Hill-MacDonald said. "I thought it was due to our inability to find an open teammate and make a direct pass. Their press had nothing to do with our inability to box them out on the offensive boards and limit their second-shot opportunities."
Kleinfelter said that the full-court pressure was mainly used to change the speed of the game for Buffalo.
"I think it had its moments, we took the lead with that," Kleinfelter said. "Our goal was to rattle them a bit and force a one-and-done. I think it definitely slowed them up. I think we had several good traps."
The Bulls were once again playing with a short bench, having just eight players come into the game, as compared to Central Michigan's 11. The added fatigue of having all five starters play 35 minutes or more had an obvious affect on the Bulls at end of the game.
Buffalo's bench could be even shorter when the Bulls head to Western Michigan on Saturday. Starting forward freshman Jamie Schiebner suffered an injury with just over one minute on the clock during Wednesday night's game. The team has not released her current health status.
Saturday's game is set to tip off at 2 p.m.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
