Follow the Cougars on Twitter
Send Cougar updates to my email
Get Text Updates
Box Score
Photos
Cedar Rapids, Iowa – Playing in their second straight NCAA Tournament, the Minnesota Morris women's basketball team found tough sledding tonight (Mar. 4), falling on the road to No. 23 ranked Coe, 78-53.
Morris led early, when Steph Roggenbuck (Osakis, Minn.) hit a three to make it 3-2 in the game's first minute. The UMAC Player of the Year was double-teamed all night long, battling for every one of her 15 points.
“We knew they were going to come out hard,” Emily Mehr (Aitkin, Minn.) said. “I guess we just weren't used to handling that much pressure. We haven't done that for a while and we struggled a little bit.”
That was the story of the game. As Coe shut down every lane, and covered each open shooter, playing as if they had seven players on the floor. A fast, athletic team that seized their opportunities.
“They had high intensity and really good shooters,” Jenni Noordmans (Hancock, Minn.) said. “And we just didn't come out and play our game right away.”
Suffering their first loss since Jan .4, the Cougars wrap up the season 21-7, having their 17-game winning streak snapped in the process. Tonight also marks the Cougars first loss of the season to a Division III team, with all of their previous losses coming to DII and NAIA competition.
The top-ranked team in the region, Coe was also the highest ranked of the four that convened on Cedar Rapids this weekend. The Kohawks improve to 25-3 with the win and advance to face Howard Payne in the second round.
The Cougars made their run early in the second half, cutting a 16-point halftime deficit to 10 after a 7-to-0 run early in the period. To start the half the Cougars were able to quickly get within 13, and then traded baskets with the Kohawks before going back down by 17 at the 16:50 mark.
The best stretch of the night for the Cougars began next, all on the back of Mehr.
“We just knew that we had to give it everything we had,” Mehr said. And at 16:34 she hit a three, to bring the score to 48-34. On the next trip down the floor she hit a jumper to pull the Cougars within 12, and after the teams traded misses she laid in her seventh straight at 14:58.
“We had to come out, be able to handle the pressure, play our game and stop them on defense,” Mehr said. “That was the main thing – our defense – we were able to calm them down for a bit.”
Trailing 48-38, the Cougars we're within 10 for the first time since the first eight minutes of the game. Mehr finished with a game-high 21 points, coming off of an 8-of-17 night from the floor.
A turnover on the next possession stalled the Cougars'' run, and after nearly three minutes of turnovers and missed shots they found themselves back down 15, looking up at a clock ticking past the 12-minute mark.
At the 8:56 mark Morris went down 20, and Coe was in cruise control from there on out.
The Cougars finished the night shooting just 31%, after entering the game as the No. 4 shooting team in the country. Coe, meanwhile, finished at 58%, the best mark for a Morris opponent on the year.
Besides Mehr and Roggenbuck, only four other players made it to the score sheet on the night, led by Tara Thielke's (Hancock, Minn.) five points.
Roggenbuck and Thielke join fellow seniors Diane Blommel (Grey Eagle, Minn.) and Brandi Cresap (Perham, Minn.) in playing their final career games. The four were the pillars of back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances, consecutive UMAC Championships and a 27-1 conference record the last two seasons.
“Got some big shoes to fill, definitely,” Noordmans said. “Lose some great seniors, all of them. And it'll be a lot of pressure, but we have to work really hard and come out and play our best next year.”
