The women's basketball team bounced back from consecutive Mid-American Conference losses with a win over the Ball State Cardinals on Sunday. The Bulls (11-10, 4-4 MAC) trounced the Cardinals (9-12, 5-3 MAC) 73-62.
"We didn't come out today with the intensity and spark that we needed against a good Buffalo team," said acting Ball State head coach Lisa McDonald in a press release. "We have a week of practices to find that spark and get back to playing 40 minutes of Ball State Basketball."
Buffalo's 11 wins are the most since the 2002-03 season, when the team went 18-11.
The Bulls started the game strong, jumping out to an 8-2 start, and kept Ball State off their game the entire night. Buffalo had a sizeable lead for most of the first half and blew the game open when senior guard Stephanie Bennett hit two three-pointers in a row with just over a minute left in the first half to put Buffalo up 32-18.
The 14-point lead was the Bulls' biggest of the game. Buffalo gave back two points before the end of the half, and went into halftime with a 32-20 lead.
In the second half, Ball State battled back to within six points of the Bulls with five minutes left in the game, when a three-pointer by Shannon Klei made the score 60-54. Buffalo secured its victory by scoring the next five points to push its lead back to 11.
Mid-way through the second half, Bennett became the 17th player in school history to score 1,000 points in a career, by scoring 24 points on 8-13 shooting. As a team, Buffalo shot 43 percent from the field, 60 percent from beyond the arc, and hit 13 of 17 free throw attempts.
The Buffalo trio of Bennett, freshman forward Jessica Fortman, and junior forward Jamie Schiebner scored 73 percent of the Bulls' points. Along with her 24 points, Bennett gathered eight rebounds and three assists, while Fortman scored 14 points and hauled in eight rebounds. Schiebner scored 16 points along with 10 rebounds, and altogether the triumvirate of Bulls scored 54 of Buffalo's 73 points.
"I knew that if we could put 40 minutes of basketball together that we could be successful today," said head coach Linda Hill-MacDonald in a press release.
The Bulls held Ball State to 36 percent shooting from the field and 26 percent from three-point distance. Buffalo collected 32 defensive rebounds out-rebounding Ball State for the game 46-34.
The Falcons were led by Julie Demuth, who scored 16 points and brought in 10 rebounds. Porchia Green also had a strong game with 13 points, nine rebounds and six assists.
"I thought we did a nice job coming back after a disappointing loss on Thursday, and got a total team effort today," Hill-MacDonald said in a press release.
Buffalo will return to the court on Feb. 9, when the Bulls play MAC opponent Toledo at Alumni Arena.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
