The No. 15 UMD women's basketball team picked up yet another victory in Romano on Saturday, overwhelmingly winning the war with the Warriors of Winona State 66-40. The Bulldogs improved their overall record to 15-2. 

But it gets even better for UMD the deeper you dive into the team's current state of affairs. The Bulldogs have already played more than half of their slate of NSIC contests for the season- they still have yet to lose to a conference foe, sitting at 12-0. That's what finding yourself on an 11-game winning streak right around the dawn of NSIC competition will do for you. Talk about getting hot at the right time.

The first quarter of Saturday's matchup started with neither team showing a clear advantage. Ella Gilbertson scored the first five points for UMD before Kaylee Nelson and Maesyn Thiesen drained back-to-back threes to give their team an 11-8 lead at the 3:25 mark. Not long after, though, a pair of Winona State free throws tied things up at 13 with 1:39 to go in the frame. 

Plenty of time for UMD to work with.

A Taya Hakamaki triple with 1:24 left started to swing the momentum fully in the Bulldogs' favor. Hakamaki's three was the first basket in an 8-0 UMD run before the quarter's end. This pushed the Bulldogs' lead to a game-high of (you guessed it) eight at 21-13 heading into the second frame.

UMD built its advantage with hyper efficiency. The Bulldogs shot 8-13 (61.5%) in period one, an effort led by Thiesen (six points on 2-3 shooting) and Gilbertson (five points on 2-3 shooting). This operation spared no expense on the defensive end- UMD held Winona to just 5-13 (38.5%) shooting from the field.

From there… the Bulldogs didn't bother to look back. They made the rest of this game into their own personal autobahn- and there wasn't a whole lot of traffic.

UMD controlled quarter number two from start to finish. As a team, the Bulldogs put up 16 points through 10 minutes. Not only that, but they did it with sustained precision, going 8-15 (53.3%) from the field. Winona, on the other hand, was held to just three points all quarter, a 1-13 (7.7%) shooting mark. Brooke Olson led the charge for the UMD offense with eight points on perfect 4-4 shooting in the frame. Meanwhile, four other Bulldogs each chipped in two points a pop.  With these efforts combined, UMD's lead had ballooned all the way to 21 at a score of 37-16 by halftime. The team's foot had met the gas pedal long ago- by this point, it was probably starting to leave a sole outline. 

All told, UMD shot a blistering 16-28 (57.1%) from the field through 20 minutes.  It'd been a team effort- all eight Bulldogs that had seen playing time had also seen one of their shots go through the net. Olson was UMD's leading scorer in the first half with 10 points, having maintained shooting perfection through two quarters of play by going 5-5 from the field. Thiesen scored six points and led the Bulldogs in the rebounding and assist departments with six boards and three dimes. Gilbertson and Hakamaki each scored five points. Lexi Karge contributed four points.

UMD did all this while simultaneously holding Winona to just 6-28 (21.4%) from the field.

The second half saw much of the same for the Bulldogs. To start, UMD outscored Winona State by a score of 17-8 in quarter number three. Gilbertson did plenty of scoring for her team in the frame, potting seven points. UMD continued to operate in full rhythm as a unit all quarter, with six Bulldogs contributing to the scoring column. At the end of the third, the score was 54-24.

A thirty-point lead brings with it some sweet advantages, one of which being the ability to extend your rotation a touch. 

By the 7:07 mark, every player that had started this game for UMD was out of the contest for good, their jobs having been done- and then some. From there, a mix of rotational Bulldogs were able to finish the job. Regardless, UMD's scoring touch seemed to be pretty infectious all the way down the bench. The Bulldogs still shot an even 5-10 from the floor down the stretch. One of those buckets stood out from the rest. Abby Johnson, a redshirt-junior who saw her first taste of competition in a Bulldog uniform on Friday, followed up that milestone with another: her first UMD bucket. It'd been a two-ball that had pushed her team's lead all the way to 36 at a score of 66-30 with 3:01 on the clock.

Credit to the Warriors- never did they stop fighting. In fact, Winona actually outscored the Bulldogs in the final frame, 16-12. The Warriors were also able to exorcise some of their shooting demons here, going 7-14 from the field in the final 10 minutes. Alas… this just wasn't enough. Winona narrowly took quarter four- UMD had dominated the first three. That sentence was the abridged story of the game's final score of 66-40. 

The second half had seen a pair of UMD players hit lucky-number-seven in the scoring department in Gilbertson and Karge. Both adhered to the team's overall efficiency in the process, too, going 2-3 and 3-4 from the field respectively. Speaking of that team efficiency, it clocked in at a rate of 52.2% (12-23) in the second half. 

The Bulldogs were led in the contest by Olson, who scored 14 points on 7-8 (87.5%) shooting, grabbed eight rebounds and blocked four shots. That block tally was good for a new career-high. It was just one of those weekends for the graduate forward.

 Gilbertson contributed 12 points on 4-7 shooting to go along with four boards. Karge scored 11 off the bench, going 5-9 (55.6%) in the process. Hakamaki chipped in 10 points on an even 4-8 shooting as a rotational piece to go along with three boards, two assists and two steals. Thiesen paired eight points on 3-6 shooting with eight rebounds and three assists. 

As a team, once UMD's shooting got hot to start the game, it never much cooled down. The Bulldogs went 28-51 (54.9%) from the field in this one. But it wasn't just the offense that was humming. Check Winona's shooting totals: 17-60, a field goal percentage of 28.3%. Seems like something was going right on the defensive end, too.

The Warriors were led by Alex Dornfeld, who provided eight points. Paige Peaslee scored six points for the Warriors. Kaitlyn Schrimpf had five. 

UP NEXT
UMD will look to ride this winning wave through yet another road trip next weekend. The Bulldogs first stop in Sioux Falls for a game against the Cougars on Friday, Jan. 20 at 7:30 before re-entering Minnesota for a contest against SMSU in Marshall on Saturday, Jan. 21 at 5:30 p.m.

NOTE: For the rest of the season, the men's team will play in the late time window of double-headers, with the women's team playing in the earlier time slot.