During last year's record season for the women's basketball team, five of the team's eight losses were by 10 or less points. The team was labeled as a run-and-gun team that would crumble under the pressure of a close game and not be able to pull the game out in the end.
Kent State University head coach even said after the Golden Flashes seven-point victory at Kent, Ohio last year that he knew if his team could get physical with the Ball State team and force the tempo that his team would win. Which it did.
The toughness of the team soon came into focus and every scouting report throughout the Mid-American Conference was saying the same thing - get physical with Ball State and you'll win.
As this season started, the same curse seemed to follow the team. It started at Kansas State when the Cardinals played their hearts out against the Wildcats. They held the lead at half and well into the second period, only to watch that lead slip through their fingers, losing by 10.
Then again the next week, at Indiana in the IU Classic, the Cardinals blew a 20-point lead and lost to the Hoosiers in double overtime.
A trend seemed to be forming just as it had the year before - if the team is going to win, it is going to win big. But if it is going to be a close game, odds did not lay in favor of the Cardinals.
Granted both of the games were on the road, an undeniable advantage to both Kansas State and Indiana. Nonetheless, head coach Tracy Roller and junior guard Johna Goff both said that the team was just able to win the big ones. Goff was quite adamant in saying that the team can not afford to just keep playing good games, but rather they needed to start winning.
It wasn't the fact that Cardinals couldn't score down the stretch in those games, it was that they couldn't stop the opponents from scoring. But as games wore on, a defensive revolution by Roller seemed to spark a new interest in the players.
It first manifested at Wisconsin against a perennial top-25 Badger squad. The Cardinals played with the lead the entire game, and after a run by the Badgers that pushed the team to its limits, the Cardinals hit key shots and had key defensive stops when needed to pull out the one-point victory.
But that was just a start as the defense continued to struggle. And as the MAC seasoned loomed on the horizon, Roller was under the gun to find a permanent fix to her team's toughness issue.
Then last week, after more than a week off to prepare, the Cardinals opened the MAC season against one of the toughest defensive teams in the MAC. The Cardinals offense struggled at times, but in the end the defense saved the day.
And again, this past weekend against another one of the top defensive teams in the league, the Cardinals relied on their defense to shut down Buffalo as the Cardinals broke open a game that was tied well into the second half.
Could it be the fix that has eluded Roller and her team for so long? Or is the team on a hot streak? Sure it has won its last three games, but the team has changed. The players have taken the "offense first" mindset and set it on the shelf, realizing that defense is going to win them the championships they so desperately want.
Players like junior Jessica Reiter have realized that scoring is not the main priority when so many people on the team can score at will. Reiter is averaging less then 10 points per game for the first time this year, but her rebounding is up and the team is playing better defense.
Is the Roller Revolution a permanent fix to the Cardinals' problems? It's a bit too early to tell. But with such a dramatic change in such a short time, the revolution has the team pointed towards Cleveland and the MAC title that waits for them.
Write to Joe at jmmcfarren@bsu.edu
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