Bowling Green State University
Wright State
Women's Basketball Falls To Wright State, 83-76
December 15, 2001 | Women's Basketball
Dec. 15, 2001
BOWLING GREEN, Ohio - Wright State University came back from a double-digit deficit to record an 83-76 victory over the Bowling Green State University women's basketball team Saturday afternoon (Dec. 15). The non-conference game was held at BGSU's Anderson Arena.
With the victory, the visiting Raiders improve to 2-8 on the year, while BGSU falls to 2-7.
Freshman Tiffany Webb scored a season-high 33 points for WSU, while sophomore Stefanie Wenzel led the Falcons with a career-high 25 points.
The game couldn't have started better for the Falcons. BGSU took a 13-0 lead with less than three minutes gone. In that time, the Brown and Orange made three three-point field goals. Wright State did not get on the board until Iesha Gray hit a pair of free throws at the 16:01 mark.
The visitors missed their first eight shots from the field on the day, and BGSU led by a 21-4 margin before Wright State got its first field goal of the afternoon. That bucket was a three-pointer from Webb at the 14:12 mark.
After trailing by that 21-4 score (the 17-point margin tied BGSU's biggest lead of the game), WSU ended the half by outscoring the Falcons, 38-15, the rest of the way until intermission.
BGSU led by a 26-9 score after a pair of Wenzel charity tosses, but back-to-back treys by WSU's Angie Ott and Webb were part of a 10-0 run that cut BG's lead to seven points. Wenzel snapped that streak with a conventional three-point play at the 8:02 mark, but WSU proceeded to go on another run, scoring the next 13 points to take their first lead of the game.
Gray scored seven consecutive points during that stretch, before Webb scored the Raiders' next seven points of the contest. The first two points from Webb during that time, a pair of free throws, tied the game at 29-all with 3:59 left, and she then hit a triple to give the visitors a lead they would hold for the remainder of the half.
In that first 20 minutes, WSU shot just .333 from the field, making 9-of-27 shots, but the team ended the half by making five of their last seven shots (.714). WSU made just one of the team's first 13 field-goal attempts, and went 4-of-20 over the first 10 minutes before going 8-of-14 in the final 10 minutes of the half.
Wright State held the Falcons to a .300 field-goal percentage in the first half. The Raiders went 19-of-20 (.950) from the charity stripe to the Falcons' 7-of-13 (.538) in that stanza.
After the intermission, layups by Webb and Robyn Swain gave the Raiders a 10-point edge, their biggest advantage of the game, with less than a minute gone. Junior Kim Griech cut into that lead with a trey, but Swain scored while being fouled and added the free throw to restore the 10-point margin.
The Falcons slowly crept back into the game, however, cutting the lead to just two points at the 12:24 mark. But, Webb hit a pair of shots, the first from behind the arc, to move the lead to seven. BG kept coming back, though.
After those points from Webb, Wenzel answered for the hosts. She scored BGSU's next eight points, with her last point bringing the Falcons within one, 64-63, with 8:48 left. Then, after Webb missed a pair of free throws at the other end, senior Dana Western-Schuka hit two charity tosses to give BGSU a one-point lead with 8:21 remaining.
Webb drew another foul and sank both tries to give WSU the lead for good with 7:08 left. BGSU tied the game one more time, on a Megan Jerome triple with 5:36 to go, but Ott and Webb hit back-to-back hoops to give the visitors a four-point lead. BGSU could get no closer.
The Falcons outrebounded the Raiders by a 48-45 margin, and BGSU had 16 turnovers while forcing the visitors into 23. But, the Falcons shot just .284 (21-of-74) on the day, while WSU's .434 FG pct. included a 14-of-26 effort (.538) in the second half.
The Raiders were 31-of-35 at the free-throw line on the day, for a .886 conversion rate. BGSU made 25 free throws in 36 attempts (.694).
In addition to Wenzel, Griech hit double digits in scoring with 11 points. All of Griech's markers came in the second half. Both sophomore Kelly Kapferer and junior Karen Stocz had nine points, while Western-Schuka had seven points and a team-high nine rebounds. Stocz had eight boards to set a career high.
WSU, in addition to Webb's 33-point effort, got 15 points from Gray and 12 from Ott. Webb went 13-of-15 from the free-throw line and also had four three-pointers, two blocked shots and a game-high six steals in just under 40 minutes. Swain had a game-high 13 rebounds.
Wenzel has scored a total of 65 points in the last four games (including 63 in the last three home contests) after scoring 48 career points in her first 21 contests as a Falcon.
The Falcons are idle from competition for nearly two weeks. BGSU will head to Coral Gables, Fla., for the Gatorade Holiday Classic on Dec. 27-28. The Falcons will open that tournament by facing Yale for the second time in just over a month. BG will then meet either Lehigh or host Miami (Fla.) in the second day's action.
Then, the Falcons will return to Anderson Arena for the Mid-American Conference opener on Jan. 2. BG's opponent on that day will be defending East Division champion Kent State.
