Ball State Women's Basketball (1-2, 0-0 MAC) struggled on the offensive end in the first half, which led to Missouri State (1-2, 0-0 MVC) building an early lead and the Cardinals could never recover losing, 74-54. Here are four takeaways from the game.
Rough Start
The Cardinals were unable to find any rhythm on the offensive end from the beginning of the game. In the first quarter, knocking down shots was a problem. The Cardinals were only made 5-23 shots, six of those shots came from behind the 3-point line and zero went in. The struggles continued in the second quarter as the Cardinals made 5-21 shots from the field. Ball State head coach Brady Sallee said nothing went wrong on the offensive end, we had open looks but we just couldn’t make shots. Sallee is still confident that shots will start to fall.
3-point shooting still a problem
The Cardinals have had trouble in the early part of the season with the 3-point shot. They are shooting a low 21.3 percent only making 10-47 attempts in the first three games. The three ball continued to not fall in the matchup against the Lady Bears. The Cardinals shot 14.3 percent from deep only making 3-21 total attempts. However, Ball State has showed that they are confident with their 3-point shot as they continue to let it fly.
Rebound battle
Missouri State was able to dominate Ball State on the glass making it hard for the Cardinals to score second chance points. The Lady Bears grabbed 50 combined rebounds to the Cardinals 33. Rebounding has also been causing problems for Ball State in the first three games and Sallee wants to see someone else step-up and help out sophomore forward Oshlynn Brown down-low. “We have to have more players grabbing the boards. We can’t just solely rely on Osh [Oshlynn Brown],” Sallee said. Brown grabbed a team-high nine boards in the game Saturday. She’s is leading the team in rebounds this season with seven per game.
Fight until the end
There’s one thing the Cardinals haven’t lacked this season and that is effort. Ball State has found themselves down in every game this season but that doesn’t stop the Cardinals from fighting until the final buzzer sounds. After the first half, Ball State was down 37-20. However, the Cardinals never gave up and made a few runs to cut the lead down. They picked it up on the offensive end and shot about 46 percent from the field in the second half. Sallee said he liked the response in the second half and thought that the team came out and played tougher than the first half. But it just wasn’t enough and the Lady Bears were able to keep control of the game and run away with the win.
Contact Daric Clemens with any comments at diclemens@bsu.edu or on Twitter @DClemens
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