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Nov. 21, 2007 LIMA -- The University of Northwestern Ohio's women's basketball team has won on the road and on a neutral court, but its first home win will have to wait for another day after dropping its home opener to Urbana University 64-51 on Tuesday. St. Marys Memorial High School graduate Haley Fannon scored 18 points to lead Urbana to its fifth win in six games. UNOH (2-2) got 14 points from Andrea Meyer and 10 from Abbie Clifton. The Racers jumped out to a 9-0 lead in the game's first four minutes. But Urbana took the lead for good on a 3-pointer by Fannon with five minutes left in the first half and went up 32-25 by halftime. UNOH cut the lead to three points twice in the second half, but couldn't get any closer. "We came out great, but Urbana just turned up their athletic ability a little bit. I don't know exactly when it was, but they picked up their intensity and we didn't keep our intensity going. Then we went into a shooting slump," UNOH coach Rick Bowersock said. The Racers shot 33 percent (18 of 54) on field goals and turned the ball over 29 times. Both those statistics were comparable to their overall numbers for the season. They were shooting 32 percent and averaging 23 turnovers a game in their first three games. Urbana shot 38 percent, but had only 15 turnovers. The Knights coach Rob Phillips thought his team struggled on offense but turned the game around with defense. "We could not find anything consistently on offense. We're struggling on offense. We have some talented people but we just haven't come together on offense," he said. "Right now we're depending too much on defense, but if I had to choose one to depend on, I'd choose defense." Phillips is familiar with first-year basketball programs. He was the first women's basketball coach at Waynesburg (Pa.) College in 1986 and arrived at Urbana when the program had hit rock bottom. "I don't feel there is that much difference between going out and recruiting in that first year or in your 14th or 15th year. You're trying to find quality young women and selling them on your school and yourself. At first, maybe you're selling them a little more on a dream than on this is what we've done," he said. "But this school (UNOH) has some resources and this a tremendous hotbed of basketball, maybe the best in the state of Ohio. There are players there. I think this can be a tremendous program," he said. UNOH played without post player Krissy Koester, who suffered an eye injury in practice. She was averaging 8 points and 7.3 rebounds a game. "She's the most aggressive rebounder we have and she's a scoring threat. She has a scratch or a cut or a scrape on her retina. They said she couldn't leave the house for a couple of days, so it must be pretty serious" Bowersock said. |
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