Ball State had a one-point lead when Brittany Carter went up for a shot at the top of the key with just 22 seconds left, and everybody in Worthen Arena believed Carter was going to attempt her tenth three-pointer.
And she was.
Until she looked down, and saw freshman Nathalie Fontaine wide open underneath the basket.
Carter redirected her shot into a pass to the freshman, and Fontaine hit an easy layup to extend Ball State’s lead to three points.
That lead would hold as Ball State (4-10 overall, 1-0 MAC) broke its four-game losing streak.
“Before the game, I asked my team to play like they practiced all week,” Ball State coach Brady Sallee said. “We had our greatest week of practice since I’ve been here.”
Three years ago, when Sallee was the head coach at Eastern Illinois, his team held freshman Courtney Osborn to seven points.
Thursday, Sallee faced Osborn again. And while she scored 17 points, which is near her season average, Osborn needed 19 attempts to get to that total.
Sallee credited his junior point guard, Brandy Woody, for defending Osborn.
“I’ve got a pretty tough kid that I can put on people and has proven that she can defend them,” Sallee said. “She was up for the challenge. Osborn wasn’t going to let us hold her to seven.”
Sallee said he didn’t pay attention to what was done to hold Osborn back three years ago, instead focusing on what Ball State needed to do to win.
Miami went into the game as one of the best rebounding and shooting teams in the MAC. It was ranked in the top five in both defensive and offensive rebounding categories, as well as field-goal percentage.
Ball State beat Miami at its own game, outrebounding it by 12 and shooting over 15 percent better from long range.
Woody earned just the ninth conference win of her career.
“It feels good,” Woody said of the win. “I can’t even explain. It’s so exciting. Especially because it’s Miami because me and Courtney Osborn have kind of gone at it the last couple of years.”
Woody said it “definitely” felt good to stick it to Osborn on Thursday night.
As the team left the court and went into the tunnel to return to the locker room, the celebratory hollering congratulating could still be heard from the court.
“It was a different team,” Sallee said. “Whether they made a conscious effort to be a little bit more vocal, whatever it was I think it helped. They’re beating on the door going out, they’re doing a little hoo-ha-ing. All of that stuff is a good thing, wearing that emotion on your sleeve.”
Despite the excitement of a new conference season, Sallee was realistic about the remainder of the season.
“We’ve got to understand that this is just game one, and we’ve got much bigger goals than just winning one game in this league,” Sallee said.
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