Marquette, Mich.- With 4:49 left in the first quarter of their game against Northern Michigan on Friday, the UMD women's basketball team took a 4-2 lead. They wouldn't trail (or even be tied with) the Wildcats the rest of the game. The Bulldogs would end up winning a contest they controlled the entire way 50-37.
The formula for success for the Bulldogs this time around? Defense.
After the first quarter, the score was 13-5 UMD. At the core of that eight-point advantage for the Bulldogs was the fact that they'd held Northern Michigan to just 1-10 shooting from the field, 0-4 shooting from beyond the arc. Meanwhile,
Brooke Olson already had six points after the first frame on 3-5 shooting. Another issue for the Wildcats is they had double the turnovers of the Bulldogs, six giveaways compared to UMD's three. The Bulldogs were able to parlay those turnovers into five points, just three points shy of their entire lead.
The second quarter was more of the same- almost exactly so. UMD outscored Northern Michigan 14-6 en route to a 27-11 lead at halftime. The Wildcats shot just 3-13 (23.1%) from the field and 0-5 from three. Northern Michigan's go-to guard Makaylee Kuhn had all six of her team's points. For UMD, both
Madelyn Granica and
Taytum Rhoades scored six points in the quarter. The Wildcats had triple the turnovers here, six to UMD's two. This hurt Northern Michigan even more this time around, as the Bulldogs had nine points off turnovers in this frame.
At the half, Northern Michigan was shooting just 4-23 (17.4%). They had yet to make a three, shooting 0-9.
The third quarter was UMD's best statistical offensive outing of the day. The Bulldogs went 7-14 from the field and 3-7 from three on the path to 17 points. Olson repeated her first-quarter output with six more points, and
Taya Hakamaki joined the mix with six points of her own. By the end of the quarter, the score was 44-20 UMD. The only reason the lead wasn't any higher is because Northern Michigan, too, had had their best scoring effort of the game so far, ending the frame with nine points. Five of those points, however, had come from the line. Even then, the Wildcats had been just 5-10 from the charity stripe in the quarter. Northern Michigan had also managed to trim down its turnover problem, ending the frame with only four giveaways.
The fourth quarter was an outlier from the rest of the game, a total 180. This time, it was the Bulldogs that struggled to find the bottom of the net. UMD went just 2-10 from the field in the fourth and had just six total points in the quarter. Meanwhile, the Wildcats had a strong outing. They still couldn't bury a three- they'd shoot 0-4 from beyond the arc in the fourth- but they went 5-12 from the field, good for 41.7%. Northern Michigan was also dead-even with UMD on the quarter for turnovers with four. Also big for the Wildcats was their enhanced production from the line- they shot 7-8 from the stripe in the fourth.
In spite of all of this, the scoreboard at the end of the game still read 50-37 UMD. Three quarters of dominance from the Bulldogs had been able to overshadow one tough frame.
Speaking of dominant, that's certainly what Olson was in this game. The forward had 18 points with a play time of 19:35, operating at nearly a point-per-minute pace. She did this on 9-15 (60%) shooting, too. Olson also grabbed six boards throughout the contest. On the other end, Kuhn was the primary contributor for the Wildcats. She had 14 points on the day across 32:10 of playing time. She also racked up ten rebounds in that span to close things with a double-double.
