On Thursday’s game against Central Michigan, the Ball State women’s basketball team was down by one point with a minute left on the clock.
Junior Brandy Woody pulled up for a 3-pointer to give Ball State the lead.
What was going through coach Brady Sallee’s mind when the ball was in the air?
“I hope it goes in.”
It did.
A couple of late free throws were made to increase the score, but the game ended with a 67-63 Ball State win.
“It was just us running our offenseand understanding what we had to do to score,” Sallee said.
Central Michigan played a zone defense against Ball State to try to avoid getting into bad matchups.
“The first game[on Feb. 7] we hurt them so much with mismatches,” Sallee said.“We were able to throw it in to Nathalie [Fontaine] and basically shoot layups against their guards.”
Central Michigan selling out to stop that from happening again led to 11 made Ball State 3-pointers throughout Thursday’s game.
Ball State’s defense also did a good job on Central Michigan, limiting the MAC’s highest- scoring team to just 63 points on 35 percent shooting from the field.
Sallee said a lot of what his team did on defense was similar to what they did in the first game.
Central Michigan’s Crystal Bradford came into the game averaging 15 points per contest. While she did score 20 points Thursday night against Ball State, she needed 24 shots to do so. Her two-game total performance against Ball State is 27 points on 27 percent shooting.
Ball State’s offense had one set in particular where it really shined, Sallee said.
“I thought throughout the last five or six minutes, we did a really good job of attacking their zone,” Sallee said. “That ended up being the difference in the game.”
In the last six minutes of the game, Ball State outscored Central Michigan 13-5. The Cardinals shot 44 percent (4-of-9) from the field, while the Chippewas shot just eight percent (1-of-12). Ball State also made 1-of-2 3-pointers, while Central Michigan made 0-of-3.
With the win, Ball State is now in sole possession of second place in the Mid-American Conference overall standings, sitting at 11-3. Toledo is at No. 1 with 13-1. Ball State will take on Western Michigan at home on Sunday for senior day, thenon Wednesday they will travel to Toledo to take on the Rockets.
“It’s a big win, no question about it,” Sallee said. “I don’t know how many people believed we could come in and win, but I know the people on this bus right now believed it.”
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