The University of Minnesota Crookston (UMC) Women’s Basketball team lost its ninth straight game in a blowout to Minnesota Duluth 77-49 in an NSIC game played at Romano Gymnasium in Duluth.
Isieoma Odor (R-Sr., Bloomington) made a jump shot to open the scoring givng Minnesota Crookston a 2-0 lead. Bren Fox (Fr., Norwood Young America) made a lay-up pushing the Golden Eagles a 4-0 lead. Fox scored four straight points pushing the visitors advantage to 8-2. With 3:55 to play in the opening quarter, UMD used a lay-up tying the game at 11-11. A following lay-up gave Minnesota Duluth a 13-11 lead. Kylie Post (Fr., Corcoran) made a lay-up bringing the Golden Eagles within 16-15. A late jumper in the final minute of the first quarter gave the Bulldogs a 19-17 lead heading into the second quarter.
Minnesota Duluth opened the second quarter with an and-one opportunity giving the Golden Eagles a 22-17 lead. Paige Weakley (Jr., Kearney, MO) made a lay-up pulling UMC within 22-19. Isieoma Odor made a lay-up pulling the visitors within 22-21. A three-pointer with 6:32 to play in the first half gave the Bulldogs a 29-23 lead. Paige Cornale (Fr., Oak Creek, WI) made a three-pointer bringing the Golden Eagles within 29-26, but Minnesota Duluth closed the first half on a 5-0 run taking a 36-28 lead into halftime. “Duluth does a really good job of defending,” explained UMC head coach Mike Roysland. “They were in the gaps and our guard play just wasn’t strong enough to get through the gaps. We didn’t have any of our upperclassmen who could get that done. Our I.Q. just didn’t seem like it was there tonight in terms of making decisions with the basketball.”
The Bulldogs opened the second half with a 7-0 run to take a 43-28 lead and full control of the game. Minnesota Crookston proved unable to cut the deficit to within single digits the rest of the game as UMC was held to just 21 points in the second half as Minnesota Duluth closed out a 77-49 win. “It started to go south because we couldn’t handle the basketball,” said Roysland following his team’s 21 turnover performance. “We were careless with the ball. They easily guarded passes or picked off passes. It was just really poor judgement on our players part. We start the third quarter with three turnovers as we came out of the locker room and we had just talked about it. We gave them momentum coming right out of halftime too.”
Minnesota Crookston falls to 10-17 overall and 5-16 in the NSIC. The Golden Eagles conclude the regular season on Saturday at St. Cloud State tipping off at 3:30 p.m. with the Riverview Health Pregame show begining at 3:00 p.m. on KROX. Minnesota Duluth improves to 18-6 overall and 17-4 in conference play.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Final | |
| Minnesota Crookston | 17 | 11 | 10 | 11 | 49 |
| Minnesota-Duluth | 19 | 17 | 23 | 18 | 77 |
| UMC | Points | Rebounds | Assists/Steals |
| Bren Fox | 11 | 2 | |
| Isiemoma Odor | 10 | 5 | 3 assists |
| Julia Peplinski | 6 | 4 | |
| Paige Cornale | 5 | 1 | |
| Paige Weakley | 5 | 4 | |
| Kylie Post | 4 | 3 assists | |
| Caitlin Michaelis | 4 | ||
| Ashley Freund | 2 | 1 | |
| Amber Schoenicke | 2 | 4 |
