The Lincoln women’s basketball team fell short of its second straight victory Saturday with a poor fourth-quarter performance and lost to Central Oklahoma by a score of 72-57 at Jason Gym.
Lincoln fell behind early after struggling from the field in the first quarter. The Blue Tigers trailed 15-5 less than five minutes into the game and it looked like the Bronchos might run away early.
Central Oklahoma (11-6 overall, 7-4 MIAA) led 17-11 after the first quarter and was able to extend its lead to 25-13 with 7:36 left in the first half.
Lincoln (5-11, 1-9 MIAA) turned it on for the rest of the first half, finishing the quarter on a 14-2 run to knot the game up at 27 heading into the break.
“I loved the battle our team put together for most of this game,” Lincoln coach Drea Mize said. “We were a bit undersized, but I thought Bailey Lewis coming off the bench did a great job of stepping up today and taking care of (Kelsey Johnson). She would get to us every now and then, but especially there in the first half, we had her in a slump.”
The Blue Tigers carried the momentum from the first half into the start of the third quarter, taking their first lead of the game with an Aliyah Bello 3-pointer on the first possession of the half. Lincoln did not stop there and led almost the whole way in the third quarter until Jaci Littell hit a 3 with 45 seconds left in the quarter to give the Bronchos a 47-45 lead heading to the fourth.
Lincoln would never see the lead again as the fourth quarter was not a pretty one for the Blue Tigers. They turned it over 7 times in the final frame and shot 4-of-13 (30.8 percent) from the floor. This was due in large part to the Bronchos switching to a 1-3-1 zone defense that gave Lincoln all sorts of issues.
“We were not very aggressive,” Mize said. “They got really wide in that 1-3-1 to take our shooters out of the way and take Niyah (Jackson) out of the game. It stopped her from getting downhill as much and we didn’t look for the one-on-one matchups in the post.”
Fouls started to pile up for Lincoln in the fourth, allowing Central Oklahoma to score 12 of its 25 points in the quarter from the foul line.
“I thought the last five minutes we really started to bow down,” Mize said. “Some of that was the foul calling, which we cannot control. I think the fouls in the fourth quarter were nine-to-three, not in our favor, so we have to do a better job of controlling what we can control. That was out of control and we just have to learn to fight back.”
Lincoln knew it was going to have its hands full with Johnson in the paint for the Bronchos, as she came into the game averaging 20.1 points per game. To counter the size of Johnson, Mize was subbing players in and out a lot more than she normally does while keeping a taller lineup on the floor than normal.
“That was just a feel for the game,” Mize said. “They did a really good job in the first quarter of running us up and down the court. So, I wanted to make sure we had fresh legs out there and kept everything in the half-court. We made do with what we needed to do and quick rotations was a key to that.”
Despite all of the adjustments, Johnson still had her way for the Bronchos. She had a game-high 24 points on 10-of-14 shooting and led UCO with nine rebounds. Her counter-part down low, Alayzha Knapp, took advantage of the referees calling the game tight in the fourth quarter and was able to add 7 of her 13 points at the free throw line. The Bronchos scored 36 of their 72 inside the paint.
Lincoln was led by Jackson and Bello, both scoring 14 points. Bello shot 6-of-8 from the field in her 23 minutes and found herself open for Jackson to find her a majority of the game. Jackson played almost 36 of the 40 minutes and was the motor of the Blue Tigers’ offense.
The Blue Tigers hit the road Thursday to start of a four-game road trip in MIAA play, opening at Rogers State (5-11, 1-9 MIAA).