The Falcon women’s basketball team dropped their fourth consecutive game and sixth in total on the season to the Ball State Cardinals Saturday afternoon. Despite starting the season fast, the loss drops the team to 0-3 in conference play, as well as 8-6 on the campaign. Ball State, on the other hand, improved their record to 13-1.
The Falcons played well; however, they struggled to bounce back from a difficult first quarter, which saw the Falcons down 23-13 early on, and they were unable to recover.
“We played a great 30 minutes in my opinion, except for the entirety of the first quarter,” Falcons head coach Jennifer Roos said. “We wanted to play better in the fourth and at the end, and we did that. But the start got us today, and we could not get ourselves out of that hole. We’ve led every game at halftime this season but two, so now teams are coming out, and we’re the hunted. It got flip-flopped, and Ball State came out strong in the beginning, and it took us a while to get up off the mat and rally.”
The team was led by sophomore guard Caterrion Thompson, who provided a surge off of the bench with 21 total points on 6-of-12 shooting with all six field goals converted being from behind the three-point line. Carly Santoro also added in a stellar performance with a double-double, scoring 17 points and corralling 11 rebounds.
Ball State excelled with spreading out the scoring, as seven different Ball State players had at least nine points or more, including Carmen Grande with 16 points and 7 assists, and Jasmin Samz with 14 points. This balanced offense created lots of problems on defense for the Falcons. Ball State made it hard for the team to determine what exactly the problem was, which, in the end, made the difference on the scoreboard.
“Credit to Ball State, they’ve got very balanced scoring,” Roos said. “(Ball State) are the highest-ranked team in terms of RPI in the MAC. Again, though, to our kids’ credit, we battled throughout. There were multiple times where we had a lot of young kids on the court, and they stepped up and produced in crunch time, and that experience will only help us grow.”
