The women's basketball team beat Western Michigan 70-70 Wednesday night, its fourth straight win. With the win, they also moved into a tie for first place in the Mid-American Conference west division.
Senior Kate Endress scored a season-high 28 points, only one shy of her career high, and pulled down 10 rebounds in the win. She got her 28 points off of nine for 15 shooting.
"Kate got a lot of her shots in the flow of our offense," head coach Tracy Roller said. "She wasn't forcing it, Western just left her open a couple times."
The two teams have now split the regular season series, since Western won the first meeting 77-74 in overtime two weeks ago in Worthen Arena.
After getting out rebounded 62-40 in that first meeting, the Cardinals set a different tone this time, pulling down 48 rebounds compared to the Broncos 29. Sophomore Kelsey Corbin helped the team's rebounding, pulling down a career high 10 boards to go along with her nine points.
"That's a pretty significant turn around," Roller said. "From that (first Western) game on it was an emphasis of our team to get better rebounding."
After a slow start, both offenses got going and ended up shooting 44 percent from the field for the game.
Ball State jumped out to a 16-9 advantage and maintained a lead for most of the game. The Cardinals transition offense started to get going after the first 10 minutes, Roller said.
"For the next 30 minutes, it seemed like we would get down the court," she said. "We got a lot of lay ups it seemed like."
Ball State took a 38-32 advantage into halftime with Endress leading the scoring with 12 points.
Endress quickly hit a jumper at the beginning of the second half, and later after Corbin hit a jumper and Becca Bajorek converted a layup, the Cardinals had their largest lead of the game at 44-34.
Western went on a 16-2 run during the middle of the second half though giving them a 63-58 lead, but Ball State quickly answered. Endress hit a three-pointer and then Hampton put in a lay up to tie the game at 63.
Western's Andrea Thelen put Western back in front once again. However that would be the last time. BSU went on a 6-0 run and never let the Broncos get closer then four after that.
"I really felt like our kids bucked it up, and we got stops at the end of the game," Roller said.
Besides Endress' 28 points, sophomore Tina Bolte had 10 points, freshman Julie DeMuth had nine points and eight rebounds, and Bajorek also had nine points.
Western's Kelly Koerber, who scored 32 points in the teams first meeting, still led her team but with only 16 points. Carrie Moore had a double-double with 15 points and 10 rebounds. Brittany Tyson and Thelen also scored in double digits with 12 and 10 points, respectively.
Roller said sophomore Erica Cotton played 16 solid minutes of defense on Moore, who was held below her average.
The Cardinals are 9-9 overall and 5-2 in the MAC, while Western falls to 3-4 in the MAC and 6-12 overall. Ball State was a game behind Bowling Green going into this week, but Kent State defeated the Falcons on Wednesday and now the two teams are tied.
"We can't really get weighed down with worrying about who's in first," Roller said. "We just got to keep getting better and trying to keep some distance by winning games when we can."
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