Women’s basketball coach Curt Miller said before Saturday’s he knew that you could not stop great players for a whole game, only contain them.
BG had to try to hold Western Michigan’s Casey Rost on Wednesday, and Miller said to win Saturday, they would need to contain Northern Illinois forward Jennifer Youngblood.
For BG, it was their inability to contain the Northern Illinois forward in the last 10 seconds that proved most costly.
It was Youngblood’s layup with five seconds left, and a free throw that followed after a questionable foul was called on Jill Lause, that were the difference in BG’s 73-72 loss to the Huskies. Youngblood scored 21 points and grabbed nine rebounds, but said that BG did a good job of defending her.
“I think they did very well,” Youngblood said. “Look at how close the game was.”
She scored 18 points and had 12 rebounds the last time the two teams played. Northern Illinois won that game, 78-58, on January 11th at Northern Illinois. Youngblood is averaging 14.7 points and 8.3 rebounds a game.
She gave credit to her teammates, particularly Joi Scott, who led the Huskies with 23 points and 11 rebounds.
“Joi did a tremendous job, and I think sometimes that takes the pressure off a lot of us,” Youngblood said. “She helped out a lot, and everybody else did their part.
It was the play at the end of the game, however, that improved Northern Illinois to 5-3 and dropped BG to 2-5 in the Mid American Conference.
Miller said that the game had strong performances from several players.
“Go-to players stepped up for both teams down the stretch, it was a great college atmosphere,” Miller said. “Jennifer Youngblood got the offensive rebound put-back to win the game, and that’s what your go-to players do.”
Youngblood got the shot to fall after grabbing two offensive rebounds after misses. She said her attempts to score at the end had little to do with the time running down.
“It’s my instinct,” Youngblood said. “If I get the ball, I’m going to shoot it. Even if it wasn’t last second, I probably still would have put it back up.”
Huskies head coach Carol Hammerle said she was pleased with her team not giving up during the play. “I just thought it was refuse to lose,” Hammerle said. “It was one of those things where you’re persistent and work hard at it. We were fortunate.”
