The Baker University women’s basketball team came up short against McPherson College as it lost to the Bulldogs 81-75 in overtime Saturday in Collins Center.
“Honestly, I’m very disappointed,” head coach Ben Lister said. “That was a team coming into the game without their best player that was asked to leave the team. We didn’t play with intensity the entire night. We didn’t get stops and they outworked us and played harder.”
The Wildcats jumped out to a 13-5 lead in the opening minutes, but the Bulldogs went on a 12-0 run to take control. BU battled back to tie it at 22-22, but McPherson went into halftime with a 35-29 advantage.
Sophomore Rashida Simpson had double figures with 10 points at halftime and teammates BriAnna Garza and Krystie Ehm quickly joined her to put together a run to begin the second half.
The ‘Cats outscored the Bulldogs 27-11 in the first 10 minutes after halftime to take a 56-46 lead for its biggest advantage of the contest. Ehm had all 11 of her points during the stretch, including three 3-pointers.
Garza hit three shots from behind the arc as well to end the game with 20 points, and Simpson had a game-high 23 points and 15 rebounds.
While Simpson led the game in those categories, Lister believes she needs to improve in other aspects of the game to make her a more well-rounded player.
“Rashida plays with a lot of effort and I appreciate that,” Lister said. “She gets after and goes hard, but Rashida just makes too many mental mistakes right now to say she played a great game. Offensively, she did some really good things for us. On the glass, she played really, really hard, but just misses a lot of assignment defensively are honestly things that are hurting us.”
McPherson limited the Wildcats to 10 points for the final 10 minutes of regulation and forced the game to go into overtime tied at 66-66.
“We don’t run our stuff well,” Lister said. “We don’t go hard. We make a lot of mental mistakes and bad decisions. We really struggle with the mental part of the game right now.”
Those mental mistakes Lister spoke of included a season-high 30 turnovers, 28 of which were in regulation, but BU still had a chance to pull out an overtime win.
Simpson gave the Wildcats a 70-69 lead with 3:09 to go in overtime, but the Bulldogs held BU scoreless for the next two and a half minutes to build a 77-70 advantage and seal the victory.
The Wildcats dropped to 9-5 on the season with the loss and will return to action to begin conference play against Peru State College at 5:30 p.m. Thursday in Collins Center.
