With the Mid-American Conference Tournament quickly approaching, the women's basketball team had to find the winning formula it lost in the last couple of games.
Even though the Bulls (14-13, 7-7 MAC) came away with a victory at Alumni Arena on Wednesday night, it still remains to be seen if they'll be able to keep that momentum going into March.
The Bulls nearly blew a 15-point lead in the final minutes against Miami (Ohio) (10-17, 2-12 MAC), but stood tall in the last seconds to walk away with a 77-74 win.
The game's final moments were unforeseeable because of Buffalo's strong performance in the first half. After falling into an early six-point deficit in the opening minutes, the Bulls started to dominate with lights-out shooting and presence in the paint.
Buffalo shot a season-high 61.8 percent in the first half and outscored Miami 24-12 in the paint.
The second half told a different story. Buffalo struggled to drain shots right out of the gate and shot a mediocre 31.4 percent from the field. Head coach Linda Hill-MacDonald grew a little concerned about this turn of events.
"I thought we were getting the same type of shots in the second half, but they weren't falling for us," Hill-MacDonald said. "We didn't seem to have as much composure. [The RedHawks] definitely stepped up their defensive pressure and instead of just settling ourselves… we ended up missing a lot of shots early in that half."
The RedHawks took advantage of Buffalo's cold streak and went on a 19-7 run to bring the score within one with 1:48 remaining in the game.
The team tried to keep calm through the heated situation by staying focused.
"I think we were just focusing on getting a stop and playing solid defense," said senior forward Kourtney Brown. "When we were on offense, they [felt the pressure] because we were still up."
The game came to a head when Brown fouled the RedHawks' Kirsten Olowinski to send her to the line. After Olowinski missed her second free throw, the RedHawks' Erica Almady came down with an offensive rebound and a second chance to pull off a comeback.
However, Brown had other plans. She intercepted Almady's follow-up pass and was fouled right after. She drained her two subsequent free throws to send the RedHawks home and to their 10th straight loss.
Brown managed to overcome Miami's double-teams in the post to score 29 points in the game. She, once again, attributed her success to her teammates.
"I really just looked for my teammates to pass it back out [when I was stopped]," Brown said. "A lot of [my points] just came from my teammates making good passes."
Junior forward Beth Christensen was also instrumental in Buffalo's win. Her career-high of 13 rebounds asserted the Bulls' advantage in the paint. She also recorded three blocks and six points.
Hill-MacDonald stressed that the team could not rest on its clutch performance with a critical game against Ohio (7-20, 3-11 MAC) coming up on Saturday.
"Ohio plays a very tenacious defense," Hill-MacDonald said. "We will have to handle the same type of pressure we experienced tonight, but maybe even turned up a notch because of [Ohio] priding themselves on defense."
Tip-off is at 7 p.m. at Alumni Arena.
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