CLEVELAND -Before last night's Mid-American Conference Tournament's quarterfinal, the Ohio women's basketball team knew ¥Melissa DeGrate as the fourth-leading scorer and the First-Team member. After a 93-74 loss last night, they knew her as the player who almost single-handedly ended their season.
The Kent State senior put in 32 points to match the most any player scored during the MAC regular season. She did it despite Ohio's pointed effort to try to stop her.
We focused on DeGrate
Ohio coach ¥Lynn Bria said. Believe it or not we did. She's the biggest difference in their team. She did it despite Ohio's full-court badgering and prolific first-half scoring.
The Bobcats (13-16 overall) used 61.3 percent shooting and six 3-pointers to rack up 50 points in the first half.
They were forcing us to play a style of game that we weren't accustomed to playing Kent State coach ¥Bob Lindsay said. Their pressure in the first half forced us to go up and down the floor. The game was like open gym. Neither the up-tempo style nor ¥Simone Redd's team-leading 16 first-half hurt the Golden Flashes (20-8) as they scored 47 points of their own before halftime. DeGrate scored 19 in the first half and ¥La'kia Stewart scored a surprising 13, well above her 6.1 points per game season average.
Bria admitted the Bobcats played about as hard and as well as they could during the first half.
I thought our team played extremely hard
Bria said. It would have been nice to quit at halftime
but coach Lindsay wouldn't allow that. What Lindsay did allow was a more aggressive second-half approach that floored Ohio.
We played on our heels for 20 minutes
Lindsay said. We had two choices: The first one was play to win; the second choice was go home. We took the first choice. The Flashes started the second half on a 13-2 run sparked by precision on both ends of the floor, and they didn't give back the lead.
Their defense caused Ohio to shoot 20 percent in the second half, miss all 10 of its 3-pointers and score only 24 points.
Both the Flashes and the Bobcats attributed that to better Kent State defense.
They flipped the script on us and pressured us back
Ohio's ¥Ciara Iglehart said.
Defense is what's going to be win us games
DeGrate said.
The Bobcats' second-half fatigue also seemed to exacerbate their loss of control. Visibly worn out, they gave the ball away 16 times for easy Kent State points in transition.
I would say I was pretty tired
Redd said. I tried to play through it but it was hard to overcome. The Flashes essentially took two of Ohio's reliable players -¥Erin Isbell and ¥Tiffany Byrd -out of the game. Isbell was held to three points and Byrd was held scoreless.
Ohio got 22 points from Redd, and 11 and 12 from Iglehart and ¥Lauren Revesz, respectively. They weren't enough to overcome a determined group of Golden Flashes.
This team wants to win
Lindsay said.
Perhaps no one wanted to win more than DeGrate.
I don't care how many points I had
she said. I just wanted to win. For the Flashes, Stewart finished the game with 18 points, ¥Tiffany Kelly -who didn't practice all week because of an injured ankle -scored 13, and ¥Lindsay Shearer hit 12 after being blanked in the first half.
With the win Kent State is now 6-0 against Ohio in post-season play. The Flashes will go on to play Marshall in the semifinals on Friday.
The Bobcats will call it a season, but after reaching Cleveland for the first time in three years and transcending expectations, they won't call it a bad one.
