Senior guard Nathalie Fontaine racked up her 11th double-double of the season as Ball State (15-5, 7-2 Mid-American Conference) beat Akron (11-10, 5-5 MAC), 78-71.
Fontaine scored 22 points and hauled in 14 rebounds with Curt Miller, head coach of the WNBA Connecticut Sun, watching from press row.
Enjoying watching two friends and terrific coaches work tonight. @BSUCoachBrady @ZipsCoachKest #MACRoots
— Curt Miller (@CurtMillerWBB) February 4, 2016
Ball State head coach Brady Sallee said the Cardinals’ play “trickles down” from Fontaine.
“We’re a team right now that’s being led by a great player,” Sallee said. “These kids know what she wants. And she’s not a, you know, in-your-face kind of [leader], but they know what she wants and they’re playing for her. We just have that look right now; … we’ve got something we’re after.”
Five Ball State players scored in double figures — Fontaine, sophomore forward Moriah Monaco (17), junior guard Jill Morrison (11), junior center Renee Bennett (10) and sophomore guard Frannie Frazier (10).
Sallee said the scoring distribution was the result of Akron’s attempt to slow down Fontaine, who entered the game second in the Mid-American Conference with 20.9 points per game.
“Clearly their game plan was to put three people on [Fontaine] and face guard [Morrison] and then take their chances,” he said. “When a team gambles like that — and we’ve seen it before — when a team gambles like that you’ve gotta be able to execute and answer the bell. … I would say that didn’t work.”
Senior Akron guard Anita Brown was the only player in the MAC averaging more points per game than Fontiane with 21.9. Brown still scored 19 points, but the Cardinals limited her to 7-18 from the floor.
Frazier totaled 20 minutes off the bench for Ball State, said the game plan was to force Brown to take tough shots.
“My main goal was just to not let her get the easy bucket,” Frazier said. “She can create off the dribble and that’s her game, but mine was just to focus and lock down on here – make her earn it like [coach Sallee] said.”
Ball State trailed at halftime, 40-34, after Akron hit 8 of its 16 three-point attempts. The Zips entered the game shooting just 30.7 from behind the 3-point line — good for ninth in the MAC.
The Cardinals bounced back in the second half, limiting Akron to just 2-11 from long range.
Sallee said he focused on motivating the players at halftime rather than shift strategies.
“I wish I could come in here and say, ‘Man, I drew this up and I showed them this and we changed this,’” he said. “But I didn’t do any of it. We weren’t who we’ve been all year in that first half, so I had to snap us back and get us to that.”
Fontaine also had an explosive second half with 12 points and nine rebounds. She was just one board away from a double-double in the second half alone.
“You just kinda have to feel the game out in the beginning — get in the locker room, get yelled at a little bit and then come back out and just make better decisions in the second half,” she said.
At 7-2 in conference play, the Ball State is now half a game behind Central Michigan (14-7, 8-2 MAC) in the MAC West Division standings, a team it will host on Feb. 10.
On Feb. 6, Ball State travels to Buffalo (11-9, 3-6 MAC), a team that just handed Ohio University (17-4, 9-1 MAC) its first conference loss of the season.
