The third-seeded Cardinal women’s basketball team took their talents and went up against the second-seeded Titans of Illinois Wesleyan in the CCIW (College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin) Tournament semifinals. Despite a late comeback attempt, a slow first quarter granted the Titans an insurmountable lead over the Cardinals.
The first quarter of the game ended with Illinois Wesleyan holding North Central at 31-18. It seemed that whenever the Cardinals scored, the Titans had an answer. The only tie of the game came at the six-minute-forty-seven second mark with the score of 8-8. For the rest of the contest, the Cardinals were playing from behind, never cutting the score differential down by more than nine points until the last minute of the game.
After a rough first quarter, the Cardinals came out and fought back for the remainder of the game. Mayson Whipple led the Cardinals in scoring with 19 points while adding six assists. Anita Sterling finished with a double-double, earning 11 points with 13 rebounds, the highest number of rebounds in the game. Caroline Heimerdinger came off the bench and was perfect from the arc, sinking four three-pointers.
The team suffered against the Titan’s fast-break points. The Cardinals only scored eight points off fast breaks while the Titans scored 36 of their points on fast breaks. 67 percent (62 points) of Wesleyan’s points came from the paint, while North Central only scored 45 percent (38 points) from that spot. The Cardinals led the second-chance points with 21 points total and North Central’s bench scored almost twice as much as the Titan’s with 44 bench points.
Despite the loss, one member of North Central’s team broke a record during the game. The all-time three-pointers in a single season for the women’s basketball team was broken in the fourth quarter, when Miranda Grizaffi surpassed the 64 three-pointers record set back in 2001. Jamie Cuny also broke her own personal record of blocks this season with a game-high six blocks, giving her a total of 95 blocks this season, four more blocks than last year’s season in two fewer games.
