A win is a win: Lady Hornets get ugly 64-57 win over Truman
By Jesse Newell
Thursday, January 11, 2007
KIRKSVILLE, Mo. — No one said it had to be pretty.
The Emporia State women’s basketball team might not have been the most graceful on Wednesday, but the Lady Hornets still came away with what was most important: their second consecutive road win and a 64-57 triumph over Truman.
“These are games — the last two — that we absolutely had to win,” ESU coach Brandon Schneider said. “They may not have been aesthetically pleasing, but a ‘W’ is a ‘W’ in this league on the road.”
Truman — which came in with a 5-7 record and 0-4 mark in the conference — gave ESU all it could handle down the stretch.
The Lady Bulldogs used a 7-0 run to cut the ESU lead to 63-57 with 1:04 remaining. The Lady Hornets held their own on the defensive end, forcing a Georgia Mueller miss with 20.3 seconds left to seal the win.
“I don’t know that there’s any bottom of the barrel in this league,” Schneider said. “It’s a fight every night.”
Emporia State started out about as well as it could have wanted, using defense to take an early lead.
The Lady Hornets forced a turnover and held Truman to 1-of-5 shooting in the first four minutes, taking an 11-2 advantage on a fast-break layup from Genae Glasper.
The run forced a Truman timeout, and a smiling Schneider congratulated his players and looked as pleased as he had been all season on the sideline.
“He was very happy,” ESU guard Andrea Leiker said, “because we’ve been talking about running the floor, and we got a lot of transition buckets.”
The Lady Hornets would extend the run, as back-to-back threes from Michelle Stueve gave the team a 17-2 cushion.
ESU’s large lead wouldn’t last. The Lady Hornets were held scoreless from the field over the next 5:13, and Truman used a 7-0 spurt to cut the deficit to 19-11.
ESU once again used its defense to turn to offense.
Stueve put in a lay-in off a baseball pass from Tegan Stuart, and Denisa Svarova made a jumper off transition to push the lead back to 12.
The Lady Hornets took a 39-27 lead into the break, with 20 of their points coming in the paint. ESU also had eight blocks at halftime, with four of those going to Svarova.
The second half would be a struggle offensively for ESU.
After a driving layup from Cassondra Boston at the 19:14 mark, ESU went 10 minutes, 16 seconds without scoring a field goal.
The Lady Hornets went 0-for-14 from the floor with six turnovers during the stretch.
“We were executing, but we weren’t getting good shots,” Leiker said. “They just weren’t falling for us, I guess.”
Meanwhile, Mueller started to take the game over for Truman on the other end.
Using a variety of post moves, the sophomore forward scored eight of her team’s first 10 points of the second half, sparking an 11-2 run that cut the ESU lead to 41-38.
“She could score, and we weren’t answering,” Stueve said. “We couldn’t get a bucket to fall.”
Casey Henningsen finally broke the field-goal slump, putting in a lay-in off an offensive rebound with 8:58 remaining to push the ESU advantage back to 48-41.
Stueve made sure ESU hold that lead the rest of the way, posting 10 of the Lady Hornets’ final 16 points.
The 6-foot-2 Stueve finished with 22 points and 16 rebounds in 35 minutes.
Boston added 13 points, and Leiker gave a huge contribution off the bench. She finished with 10 points and nine rebounds, despite only standing at only 5-foot-6.
All of the sophomore’s points came in the first half in only 11 minutes of playing time. She was 3 of 5 from the field and 3-for-4 from the three-point line during the stretch.
Schneider said Leiker needed to develop into the team’s third- or fourth-leading scorer, especially with the injury to ESU guard Carolyn Dorsey.
“There’s lots of shots out there she’s not taking,” Schneider said. “We’ve got to get her to assert herself, especially when those two (Stueve and Henningsen) aren’t getting shots.”
Dorsey will be out at least until next weekend with a torn PCL in her knee.