Kent, ohio - Slow starts have hampered the women's basketball team all season, and Wednesday night, a slow start cost the Cardinals the game.
In a showdown of Mid-American Conference division leaders, the Golden Flashes ended the Cardinals' eight-game winning streak with a 64-57 loss.
Kent State point guard Kate Miller forced senior Shala Crook to take bad shots and did not allow her to set up the offense for Ball State.
"We knew they were going to come out and pressure us a lot," Crook said. "It was just about us keeping our composure and playing Ball State basketball."
But the Cardinals (18-5 overall, 10-2 MAC) were beaten at their own game as Kent State (14-9, 10-2) continually forced the pace, beating the Ball State defenders to the other end for uncontested layups.
"We actually played the zone pretty well," head coach Tracy Roller said. "We just didn't do the little things, like hit shots and rebound."
The Golden Flashes controlled the play in the paint, as they continually found 6-foot-6-inch Andrea Csaszar in the first half with lob passes. The Cardinals could do little to stop Csaszar as she just turned to the basket for easy buckets.
"Csaszar is such a great player," Roller said. "And when you have a team like ours and you don't have a player to counter, the best you can do is try and pack it in and hope they don't hit outside shots."
Ball State's inability to hit a shot and Kent State's 15-rebound advantage left the stunned Cardinals reeling, as the Golden Flashes finished the first half with an 18-6 run.
Emotions controlled the second half as Ball State found its groove and immediately began to cut into the Golden Flashes' lead. The Cardinals made up the 12-point deficit, and with five minutes remaining in the game took their first lead of the game 52-50. Following another Cardinal basket, the momentum had switched to Ball State and the Golden Flashes were sluggishly moving up and down the floor.
But following a media timeout with two minutes remaining, the Golden Flashes used a 14-3 run, with 10 of those points coming from free throws, to pull away.
"We bent at times during the game, but we didn't break," Kent State head coach Bob Lindsay said. "For us to hold a team of that offensive quality to a 32-percent shooting night is a tribute to the way we defended."
In the Cardinals' ever-elusive goal of playing a complete 40-minute game, Roller said the team did not even play a half, let alone a full game.
"I felt we played about 15 minutes," Roller said. "The scary thing is we had a chance to win at the end. And when you don't play 40 minutes against Kent State, you're not going to win."
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