TIFFIN – The Wilmington College women’s basketball team struggled in the middle two quarters, getting outscored by 19 during that 20 minute span, and the Fightin’ Quakers lost to Heidelberg Saturday, 74-66, in Ohio Athletic Conference action.
“I thought when we got the lead our shot selection wasn’t very good and, at the same time, they started making shots,” said Wilmington head coach Jerry Scheve. “We could never really recover from that. Defensively, we had an off game and they had some kids step up and hit some big shots. Shot selection was a problem and we didn’t defend well today. We cut our turnovers down today, our rebounded a good rebounding opponent, but when it comes down to it we didn’t get enough good shots and allowed them to get easier shots than we wanted.”
Heidelberg scored 12 of the first 16 points in the second quarter to take the lead and finished the quarter with an 18-6 advantage to seize control of the game. The Student Princes got 33 points from their bench, including a combined 26 from Maggie Davault and Theresa Jackson.
“They are a deep team and they don’t start their best offensive players,” said Scheve. “They bring some of their best offensive players off the bench; they are going to score points. That is really what makes them hard to guard. They create some mismatches for us, and they took advantage of those mismatches, especially in the second quarter.”
The third quarter was much of the same as a 10-2 run early in the period allowed the Student Princes to push out to its first double-figure lead of the game. Heidelberg’s lead ballooned to as much as 20 points before Wilmington tried to mount a comeback.
The Fightin’ Quakers cut the deficit to nine points with four minutes remaining, and down to seven with 2:11 left, but just couldn’t get enough stops or mount enough offense to complete the comeback.
Junior Brittaney Jefferson led the way with 22 points, while sophomore Ellie Kivell added 12 points.
Freshman Mackenzie Campbell tallied 11 points with six rebounds and a team-high four assists. Junior Mary Moyer pulled down a team-high nine boards.
Wilmington (7-12 overall, 4-8 OAC) hosts No. 15 Ohio Northern 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in Ohio Athletic Conference action. It’s the second straight ranked team to visit Fred Raizk Arena in Hermann Court.
