BETHLEHAM, Pa. -- It was a tale of two halves for the women's basketball team against the host Lehigh Mountain Hawks Sunday. In the championship game of the Christmas City Classic, the team followed a first half of near perfection with a second half on the other end of the spectrum.
"We were as close to perfection in the first half as we could ever get," head coach Tracy Roller said. "We played well defensively, we were everywhere we needed to be. We were in the gaps and up the lines, we were scoring. I honestly believe that was the best half we have ever played."
To get to the championship game, the Cardinals defeated Tennessee-Martin 98-61 in an offensive showcase by Ball State.
In the championship, the more defense-minded Lehigh team proved to be more of a test for Cardinal shooters. However, in the first half, there was little the Mountain Hawks could do but watch aimlessly as the Cardinals repeatedly beat them down the floor for easy looks at the baskets.
Led by the quick offensive spurts of junior Jessica Reiter, who scored nine of the Cardinal's first 21 points, the team's 16-3 run to break a 7-7 tie seemingly put the game out of reach early in the first half.
Senior Tamara Bowie led the game with 29 points and nine rebounds on her way to tournament MVP honors for the second-straight week. Time and again Bowie found herself leading the fastbreak from the point after rebounds or steals, leaving shooters open on the wings at her disposal.
"Their post players were a little slower than us," Bowie said. "I just took advantage of that. Not too many post players would expect another post to bring the ball up the floor. I just stepped up and took the shots they gave me."
As good as the offense was in the second half, the Cardinals defensive intensity is what gave Lehigh the most problems. The Mountain Hawks barely mustered a 40-percent shooting mark for the first half and was forced into 12 turnovers, scoring 28 points.
"We made defense one of our points of emphasis at the start of the game,"
Bowie said. "We came out and executed, and that's something we really had to focus on. You can't just let them come out and score, you have to shut them down."
It did not take long in the second half for the highly motivated Lehigh squad to start chipping away at its 22-point halftime deficit. Led by the play of Anne Tierney, the Mountain Hawks quickly cut the lead to 16 as the Cardinals lost the intensity that was so vital to their defense in the first half.
Roller was quick to go to the bench to find motivated play, and she found it in freshman Raechelle Hampton as she notched career highs with 11 points and five rebounds off the bench. But it may have been Hampton's defensive awareness that saved the game. Her pressure on Tierney helped force her into poor shot selections and forced her out of position for rebounds.
"Raechelle and I sat down and talked and really had a defining moment about where she is at," Roller said. "She stepped up to the challenge and really had a great game."
Unlike previous games this year, Roller used her bench, as everybody on the roster played and gained what she called "valuable experience for bigger games."
"That was really the reason for us coming (to the tournament)," Roller said. "We really do have a great bench, we just weren't able to show it in our first three games."
"Of all the things we did, we got our confidence," Roller said. "We shot the ball well, we executed well defensively and we just went out and got confident."
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