Falcons Head into the Holidays on Festive Note after 91-41 Win over Madonna

Wednesday, December 21

Bowling Green, Ohio

7:00 PM

Bowling Green State University

Madonna

Noelle Yoder tied her career high with 14 points vs. Madonna Wednesday night (Brandon Heiss photo)

Falcons Head into the Holidays on Festive Note after 91-41 Win over Madonna

December 21, 2011 | Women's Basketball

Yoder's 14 points lead balanced BGSU attack

By: BOWLING GREEN, Ohio (BGSU Athletic Communications)

The Bowling Green State University women's basketball team ended the pre-holiday schedule on a happy note, posting a 91-41 win over Madonna University on Wednesday evening (Dec. 21). The non-conference game was held at the Stroh Center.

FINAL STATS: HTML   |   PDF
PHOTO GALLERY: courtesy Brandon Heiss, BGSU Marketing & Comm.
POSTGAME AUDIO: Noelle Yoder   |   Curt Miller
Scroll down for video of the postgame interviews with Yoder and Miller

With the win, the Falcons improve to 8-3 on the season, while the Crusaders fall to 5-6 on the year.

In the team's final game before Christmas, perhaps it's only fitting that a player named Noelle led the team in scoring. Sophomore Noelle Yoder had 14 points to pace a balanced BGSU attack. Yoder tied her career scoring high in the win.

Senior Jessica Slagle and redshirt junior Danielle Havel had 13 points apiece, while no fewer than six other Falcons scored at least six points in the victory.

Junior Chrissy Steffen had nine points, while a trio of teammates -- redshirt sophomore Alexis Rogers, true soph Jillian Halfhill and freshman Jasmine Matthews -- scored seven points apiece. Matthews made her first collegiate start on Wednesday night.

Juniors Simone Eli and Allison Papenfuss each had six points in the win. In all, a total of 12 BGSU players found the scoring column as the Falcons rolled up a season-high point total.

BGSU also had a season-best 25 assists in the game, with Halfhill dishing out five and freshman Logan Pastor four. The Falcons had 15 assists on 16 baskets in the second half.

Kaylee McGrath led the Crusaders, scoring a game-high 16 points and adding a team-best nine rebounds.

BG had a whopping 60 rebounds, more than double MU's total (27) on the night.   Sophomore Jill Stein led the way on the boards, with a career-high 11, while Havel and Rogers had eight apiece.

The Falcons got a pair of layups from Rogers within the first 32 seconds of the game, and BG was off and running.   The redshirt soph took a pass from Havel and scored with just 11 seconds gone, and she then stole the ball from McGrath and sailed in for an uncontested layup.

The Brown and Orange would score the first 10 points of the game, with Slagle sandwiching a three-point play around the first media timeout of the evening, and Halfhill capping that run with a jumper.

McGrath, who would score her team's first 11 points of the night, connected from beyond the three-point line to get the Crusaders on the board at the 14:11 mark, and hit a layup several minutes later to get her team within seven once again. Havel hit back-to-back layups midway through the period, with the second coming on a nifty pass by Stein for a 20-7 BG advantage.

McGrath's eighth and ninth points of the game came on a jumper with 9:54 remaining in the period, but Stein's jumper began an 8-0 run for the Falcons. Havel scored six-straight points in that stretch, giving the Brown and Orange a 28-9 lead. McGrath countered with another bucket, but Rogers hit a free throw, and a Yoder three-pointer, one of her game- and career-high four on the night, put the lead over 20 points for the first time.

Yoder's trey was part of a 10-0 BGSU run that included a Matthews triple with 4:01 left in the period. After Heather Pratt scored for the visitors, the Falcons scored the last four points of the half to take a 42-13 lead.

McGrath scored 11 of her team's 13 first-half points, and also had seven of the Crusaders' 15 rebounds during the opening 20 minutes. The Falcons had no fewer than 38 boards in the first half.

Steffen took a pass from Matthews and knocked down a three-point try with just eight seconds gone in the second half. After Becca Wojcinski countered with a layup at the other end, Slagle made the 'extra pass' to Havel for another triple, and the Falcons' lead was 33 points, 48-15. Slagle's second 'and-one' layup of the game, combined with the ensuing free throw, gave the hosts a 36-point advantage with 1:04 gone in the period.

The Crusaders kept the deficit in the 30-point range for the first 10 minutes of the half, but a pair of Papenfuss free throws began a 19-2 run. The first five Falcon points came at the charity stripe, and after Pratt's layup with 7:51 remaining, BG scored 14 consecutive points.

That 14-0 run saw the Falcons hit four three-pointers. Halfhill fed Steffen for a trey, and after a Stein steal, Halfhill picked up another assist with a long pass ahead to Slagle for a wide-open layup. Those two hoops came just 20 seconds apart.

Eli found Yoder for a three-ball, before hitting two herself. The Genoa native took an inbounds pass from Halfhill and knocked down a right-corner trey for her first points of the season, then drilled another shot from beyond the arc just 32 seconds later. That shot gave the Brown and Orange an 86-37 advantage.

A three-pointer by Pastor in the final minute gave BG a 50-point lead, the largest of the game.

In addition to points, rebounds and assists, the Falcons also posted season-high totals in three-point field goals made (13) and attempted (31), and BG tied a season best with five blocked shots. The home team was 11-of-17 from three-point land in the second half.

The Falcons, after a break for the holidays, will head westward for the final two non-conference games of the season. BGSU will close calendar year 2011 with games at Wyoming (Dec. 29) and Colorado State (Dec. 31), before beginning Mid-American Conference play by hosting Kent State on Jan. 4.

FALCON NOTES
* BGSU's 50-point margin of victory was the team's largest in nearly nine years, since an 89-39 win over Savannah State on Dec. 22, 2002 ... the school record is a 58-point victory (94-36) over Taylor in the 1981-82 season.

* The Falcons' total of 60 rebounds was the program's highest in over seven years, since BG had 64 boards in a win at IPFW on Nov. 19, 2004 ... BGSU won that game by a 115-84 final in Fort Wayne, Ind.

* Jasmine Matthews made the first start of her collegiate career on Wednesday night ... Matthews is the first freshman to start a game for BGSU in four seasons ... then-freshmen Lauren Prochaska and Crystal Murdaugh each started all 34 games in 2007-08, while Chelsea Albert made six starts that season.