It was a rough trip down to South Dakota for the UND women, getting beat in both contests against USD and SDSU. They fell to 0-3 in the conference. Not quite the start that they had in mind.
How much a weekend can change things for UND. They hold serve at home, taking down both Omaha and Denver to improve their overall record back to .500 (8-8) and improve their conference record at 2-3.
Thursday
UND 71, Omaha 57
Despite falling behind in the first quarter, 20-16 and UND only taking a 3 point lead into the half, UND leaned hard on their defense in the 2nd half, only allowing the Mavericks to score 22 points in the entire half! The Mavs went 9-31 from the field in the 2nd half, including a 1-12 performance from downtown.
The starters led the way once again for UND, Maggie Manson provided UND with some outside shooting, hitting a pair of 3s, while going 4-5 from the field, scoring 10 points.
Melissa Leet did most of her damage on the defense end, with 4 block shots and 3 rebounds to go with her 6 points on the night.
The big scoring came from Lane, Orth, and Borowicz. Olivia Lane had 12 points and 8 rebounds and 4 assists on 6-11 shooting. Claire Orth had 15 points and 8 rebounds on 6-12 shooting. She also tallied 3 steals in the contest. Kacie Borowicz led the team in scoring with 18 points on 5-10 shooting. She also went 7-8 from the free throw line and grabbed 8 rebounds as well.
The UND bench also provided a punch to help the squad get their first Summit Win. Jolene Daninger, who has developed into UND top reserve player, had 7 points, most of that from the free throw line and 7 rebounds. Sammiyah Hoskin also provided a couple of baskets to help the cause.
Saturday
UND 80, Denver 75
UND had 4 scorers combine for 78 of the teams 80 points, but the 4 players had quite the performance for UND.
Olivia Lane put together a dominate performance, scoring 25 points and grabbing 11 rebounds. Denver had a hard time containing her down low and Lane was very aggressive on the offensive boards whenever she did miss. She got off to a hot start in the 1st quarter, going 6-7 from the field and scoring 12 points.
Melissa Leet put up one of the better performances of her UND career. Leet had 17 points on 8-12 shooting and grabbed 10 rebounds. She also provided 3 assists and blocked 3 shots, showing that she could do a little bit of everything. She also hit a few 12-15 foot jump shots to show off her range. Her and Lane did a good job in slowing down one of the better forwards in the conference in Uju Ezeudu, who score 28 points, but needed 21 shots and 11 points off of the free throw line to get there. They made her work for everything down low.
Kacie Borowicz had another big afternoon, dropping 25 points on 8-15 shooting and going 6-7 from the free throw line. She also had 6 rebounds and 5 assists in addition to those points. She was able to cut through the Pioneer defense and close out the game at the free throw line, continuing to cement herself as one of the better free throw shooters in the nation.
Claire Orth had a nice night, scoring 13 points on 5-12 shooting. While not quite as dynamic as the other 3, Orth had some important buckets in the 4th quarter as Denver was attempting to make a late push to win the game.
Once again, the team shot very well from the field, around 48% for the game and crushed Denver on the rebounding side 47-31. This allowed UND to beat Denver on 2nd chance points 21-12. UND also scored 50 out of their 80 points in the paint. Only 14 turnovers for UND, which is a nice improvement over last weekend. If they can keep those turnovers around 10-14 a night, that will be the recipe for a lot of wins. The 3 point shooter was low, only going 2-10 from 3. However, when you were dominant in the paint, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to shoot from outside if you are having success down low.
These were two wins that UND desperately needed. Instead of finding themselves in the basement of the conference, they now found themselves in the middle of the pack. The Omaha win looks a little better after they went down to Fargo and beat the Bison on their home court. They have also matched their conference record from last year as well with these two wins. So now they hit the road to Illinois and Minnesota to take on Western Illinois and St. Thomas, to have an opportunity to get both their overall and conference records above .500. Both teams are currently ahead of them in the standings and the Power rankings, so there is a good opportunity to make a statement.