After putting up 75 points against Kent State on Wednesday, Ball State was unable to get find its offensive groove against Buffalo on Saturday afternoon, suffering a 61-37 loss at Worthen Arena.
It was a horrid game for the Cardinals (8-15, 3-7), who turned in their worst point total and shooting percentage, 20.4 percent, of the season. Coach Kelly Packard was thoroughly disappointed in her team's performance.
"We didn't shoot the ball well," Packard said, following the game. "We're coming off a game where we shot 56 percent and is there an explanation for [today's performance]? We got some good great looks early and they didn't go."
The Cardinals held a 4-2 lead following junior guard Mercedes Millers' short-range jumper, but the Bulls battled back to take the lead after senior guard Brittany Hedderson converted a jump shot in the paint.
The game unraveled for the home team when the offense went over nine minutes without a basket. The Bulls capitalized on the Cardinals' blunders by going on a 14-to-zero run, until Cardinals' junior guard Shanee' Jackson sank a pair of free throws to make the score 28-15 with under two minutes to play in the first half.
"We just came out sluggish," Jackson said. "We just need to play hard, play together and go out there and be competitive."
Senior co-captain Amber Crago gave Ball State its first field goal in over 13 minutes to open the second half. But the Bulls responded with a 3-point field goal from sophomore guard Margeaux Gupilan.
While the Cardinals struggled to score, the defense wasn't much better. Bulls' sophomore forward Nytor Longar created chaos in the paint, scoring 16 points for the game, including going 7-for-11 from the field.
Packard used senior co-captain Suzanne Grossnickle, Crago, sophomore forward Katie Murphy and freshman forward Neschelle Williams to maintain Longar, but the combination wasn't effective.
"[Longar] got off to a quick start," Packard said. "The bottom line is we didn't shoot the ball well. Twenty percent is dreadfully low."
Besides Longar, Hedderson also was the central focus for the Bulls' offense. Hedderson turned in a team-high 17-point performance to help the Bulls (7-17, 2-8) snap a three-game losing skid.
"Brittany has been stellar for us all season long," coach Linda Hill-MacDonald said. "Nytor is really starting to hit her stride. She's tough to stop when she slows down and sticks to the fundamentals, doesn't get rattled with the contact. She's a very good basketball player, and I thought she showed that today."
Hill-MacDonald wasn't expecting such a poor performance from the Cardinals, but added that after watching her team put up 92 points in a loss at Western Michigan Thursday night, her team didn't play a perfect game either.
"That's this league," Hill-MacDonald said. "You never know. You just have to bring your A game defensively no matter where you go, because offensively, you're not always going to have an outstanding night."
Though the Cardinals have struggled with consistency, Hill-MacDonald thinks highly of them.
"I really like this team," she said. "They're very young, [and] you can expect some inconsistency with a young team. But they all play very, very hard. They've got some nice shooters, some nice post presence. The consistency will come from them. They're a very balanced team. I think they're a team that's going to be very, very good."
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