The Baker University women’s basketball team won its second consecutive game after defeating Haskell Indian Nations University 82-70 Tuesday in Collins Center.
The Wildcats were led by sophomore Krystie Ehm, who scored a career-high 25 points after shooting 8-11 from the field and 4-5 behind the arc.
Senior Alisha Fanshier added 21 points and five assists in her first game of the season.
“We needed her leadership and she hit some really big shots down the stretch for us,” head coach Ben Lister said. “She just brings a real calmness to the floor, makes good decisions, gets herself to the free-throw line and gets other kids involved.”
Lister was pleased with how the team has played offensively in the past two games as the Wildcats have scored 80 or more points in each win.
“We run a system that has a lot of balance and gives a lot of different kids looks,” Lister said. “We’ve just done a really good job with our spacing on offense, we’ve hit shots when we are open and we’ve really controlled the glass.”
The ‘Cats outrebounded the Indians 50-33 with the help of 12 boards from senior Sherece Huddlin and eight from sophomore Rashida Simpson.
After experimenting with different lineups for the first two games, Lister used a smaller rotation of players in Tuesday’s matchup.
“This was really the first night where we really kind of settled in to a 10-kid rotation,” Lister said. “I can’t say that that 10 will be the same 10 the entire year because we’ve got a lot of kids that can play. Our five that didn’t get on the floor tonight are very talented and it’s going to be a fight for minutes all year.”
While the Wildcats had success offensively, Lister believes they still need to tighten things up on the defensive end. Baker jumped to a 56-35 lead with just under 14 minutes remaining, but Haskell fought back within 61-55 with 9:21 to go.
“We’ve got to be a better defensive team,” Lister said. “We had a lot of breakdowns there in the first half early and we had a really rough stretch there in the second half.”
BU buckled down defensively for the remainder of the half as Fanshier and Ehm continued to lead the Wildcats’ offense to victory.
Baker will go for its first road win this season Friday when it takes on Park University at 5:30 p.m. in its first game of the Benedictine Classic in Atchison. The Wildcats will come back at 1 p.m. Saturday to play Ottawa University in their second game of the classic.
