HUNTINGTON, W. Va. -- Adding to the mass confusion that the race for the Mid-American Conference West crown has become, the women's basketball team fell to Marshall on Saturday, 86-69, to drop the Cardinals one game from first place in the West.
Marshall jumped out from the start, hitting nine three-point baskets in the first half, which is a season-high for the Herd (8-14 overall, 4-7 MAC). And as the Cardinals (15-7, 9-3) struggled on offense, their inability to stop Marshall from doing anything on offense led to a 15-point deficit at halftime.
"We never expected to see anything like the shooting we had," Marshall head coach Royce Chadwick said. "We were very confident with our shots and we weren't afraid to shoot."
Marshall's 86 points were the most it had scored all season, and the three-point shooting overcame the Cardinals, who were without senior Tamara Bowie due to a chronic knee injury that she has been fighting all season. Without Bowie in the lineup, the Cardinals lacked an inside go-to player to rely on to get points when the offense was struggling.
In Bowie's absence, sophomore Kate Endress stepped in to fill the void at power forward. But the more perimeter-oriented Endress tried to overcome the more physical defense by the Marshall post players.
Nonetheless, it was Endress and junior Johna Goff who stepped up to carry the team as mainstays junior Jessica Reiter and freshman Dana Collins struggled to get anything accomplished on either end of the floor.
Endress and Goff both broke the 20-point barrier, but the majority of the points came from outside shooting and not in the paint or on the fastbreak.
"Of course when you don't have a player like Tamara Bowie in the lineup you're going to hurt," head coach Tracy Roller said. "But you have to have other players step up. Kate and Johna did that, but after that we didn't have a thing."
Even as the Cardinals mounted a too-little-too-late comeback in the second half, Roller would not offer any reasons for the Cardinals being dominated in every aspect of the game by the Thundering Herd.
"I could give any excuse I wanted," Roller said. "We didn't have Bowie, we had a six-hour bus ride, we were tired. But the bottom line is that Marshall came to play and we just didn't answer."
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