The NAU women's basketball team repeatedly shot itself in the foot on Saturday, missing more layups than shots made in a display that cost them the game against the University of Montana.
NAU women’s basketball dropped a frantic, back-and forth-contest to the University of Montana, 66-60 on Saturday, missing 25 layups while making just 23 shots all game.
Graduate forward Khiarica Rasheed and junior guard Regan Schenck were the Lumberjacks’ main scorers. Rasheed dropped 17 points and grabbed 11 rebounds for her first double-double of the season, while Schenck added 13 points, six rebounds and four assists. The two combined to go 13-of-28 from the field, but the rest of their team shot 10-for-48 which put NAU at just 30% shooting on the day.
Montana didn’t exactly shoot the lights out either, but its 38% mark on the day gave it the advantage it needed to keep NAU at bay. Redshirt junior forward Carmen Gfeller was the top scorer for Montana with 18 points — 12 of which came on free throws — and she came down with 13 rebounds as well.
NAU head coach Loree Payne thought her team did not do a good enough job of recognizing who the ball should have gone to at times.
“We need to do a better job of understanding who’s hot, [Rasheed] had a couple of back-to-back possessions and then we kind of stopped giving her the ball,” Payne said. “We were continuing to shoot shots when we weren’t hitting any, so we’ve got to be a little smarter in understanding where we need the ball to go on the court, and we’ve got to finish.”
Finishing at the rim was a problem for NAU, who missed 25 layups as a team.
Payne acknowledged her team’s poor shooting night and speculated that part of the reason was players not being totally dialed in.
“It’s tough when you just aren't knocking down shots,” Payne said. “We got like 20 more attempts than [Montana] but our shooting percentage was not great. We missed a lot of easy buckets tonight, a lot of wide-open layups. I think a little bit is players still coming out of [COVID-19] protocols and we’re still trying to get our timing back, but it was definitely a tough shooting night for us.”
Despite keeping the margins close for the game, NAU was also out-rebounded 16 to seven in the fourth quarter which — compounded with their inability to finish easy shots — spelled disaster for the Lumberjacks.
Payne also understood that her team’s timid play on both ends of the floor was a big reason for the loss.
“I felt like we put together three really strong quarters of rebounding and we had a little bit of slippage in the fourth quarter, which can't happen,” Payne said. “In a game of this magnitude, we need to make sure we are really solid on the defensive end and in the fourth quarter we gave up too many offensive boards. We were outsized today, but we were going in and almost shying away from contact and almost afraid to get blocked instead of absorbing the contact and finishing. If we would have finished a few more of those easy shots, it’s a different outcome.”
The conference loss drops NAU to 7-8 overall and moves them back to fifth in the Big Sky standings. Its next game will be on Monday, Jan. 24 at 7 p.m. against Eastern Washington in Cheney, Washington.
Despite the loss, Payne thought her team played a strong game defensively and thinks it’s only a matter of time before they’re able to put it all together.
“Our defensive energy and effort was much stronger, I think we’re making strides there and we’ve just got to put it together,” Payne said. “We’ve just got to put together a complete game, and we’ve got to get healthy and get back to full strength. I think that one of the biggest challenges right now with lineups and rotations is kids are playing with players they haven’t had a ton of practice with and we need to get back to playing full strength."
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