No. 7 Emporia State got 36 points off turnovers against Southwestern on its way to a 97-65 win in the NCAA Division II Central Region first round game Friday.
The Lady Dawgs’ winning streak comes to an end at five and their season ends at 19-11.
Laura Patrick had a game high 27 points for ESU, the MIAA tournament champions. Merissa Quick added 17 points in the win.
Southwestern’s Sarina Sayama had a team high 14 points and Michelle Fisher put in 12.
Coach Kelsi Musick had no problem assessing the contest from her team’s perspective.
“We definitely didn’t play up to our potential,” Musick said. “We had way too many turnovers and they had way too many offensive rebounds.
The key was our turnovers. They capitalized and scored on the majority of those and it definitely caused us to dig a hole that we couldn’t find our way out of.”
SWOSU went more than eight minutes in the first half without a field goal, which allowed the Hornets to open up a 27-5 lead midway through the period.
Kylie Boggess led the charge in the second half with four three-pointers to cut a 29-point deficit down to just 11 with 13:48 to play.
But the long range makes weren’t happening often enough.
“I felt like we needed to beat them from the outside,” Musick said. “And I didn’t feel like our shooters were ready to shoot when they needed to.
“Our passes were a little off and we should have had better attacks. We tried to score off the first attack against a bigger team when we needed to create more attacks and make them close out.
“And we needed to knock down some threes. Kylie stepped up big as far as making the threes, but no one else was really ready to take the threes when we needed them.”
Missed shots and turnovers plagued SWOSU right after the second half run, while the Hornets continued to shoot well, to the tune of a 19-1 run, and opened up the lead to its final margin.
“Between the turnovers and the shot selection, we didn’t give anyone a good performance today.”
For Southwestern, five seniors took the court for the final time – Fisher, Sarina and her sister Taryn Sayama, Sarah Mendoza and Jaimee Cohen.
“I couldn’t be more proud of this group of seniors,” Musick said. “They’ve had to overcome a lot of adversity and they’ve showed a lot of guts and a lot of heart.
“They all did what they needed to do this year. Especially in this last push in the conference tournament to get that huge upset against Harding and to be able to make it to the national tournament. It speaks very highly of those seniors.”