With the game slipping away from Northwestern in the closing minutes, reserve center Melissa Miller brought her team back. Her two big shots cut Purdue’s lead to three and gave NU the momentum it needed for the comeback.
Instead, three turnovers in a 45-second span cost the Wildcats (4-15, 0-7 Big Ten) in their 52-38 loss to the Boilermakers (9-9, 5-2) at Mackey Arena on Sunday. It was their ninth loss in 10 games.
“We had 32 turnovers and scored 38 points, so you’re not going to win a whole lot of ball games with those two numbers,” coach Beth Combs said.
The Cats are averaging 19.2 turnovers per game this season. By the end of the first half, the team had thrown the ball away 18 times. Despite the high number of turnovers early, NU found itself down by one after 20 minutes, 24-23.
Although the Cats took 15 fewer shots in the first half than the Boilermakers, when they kept the ball long enough to shoot it, they weren’t missing. The team went 9 of 17 from the field, shooting 52.9 percent, including hitting 50 percent of their 3-point attempts.
Heading into the locker room on an 11-2 run, the Cats looked poised to take control.
“First, I give our defense a lot of credit because we kept them from scoring,” guard Meshia Reed said. “I think everybody contributed on the offensive end at some point too.”
After the break, the Cats came out energized, scoring five quick points with Ellen Jaeschke’s jumper and Reed’s 3. With 16:21 to play, NU reclaimed the lead, 28-24. Reed led her team in scoring with nine points.
But then an almost three-minute scoring drought that included four Cats turnovers gave Purdue the opening it needed to take control of the game heading into the final 10 minutes. Miller gave NU its final good look at a comeback with 3:20 remaining by pulling the Cats within three, 41-38.
Miller’s jumper would be the Cats’ last bucket of the game, as they went scoreless for a second three-minute drought.
“(Purdue) just played really good defense down the stretch, and we didn’t respond as well as we would have liked,” Miller said. “We made a few mistakes that were costly, but I don’t think that’s what cost us the game.”
Just as important as the 32 turnovers was the sub-par performance of NU’s frontcourt. Amy Jaeschke, coming off her career-high 26-point performance Thursday, only mustered eight points, but also recorded five blocks. Her cousin Ellen Jaeschke finished with eight points as well.
And when the Jaeschkes don’t score big, the offense doesn’t seem to run as smoothly.
“We stopped executing our offense and weren’t able to get the shot, so we ended getting ourselves out of our offensive set, Purdue got aggressive and we couldn’t answer,” Combs said.
Still, Combs said the team is getting closer to what it wants to be: a squad that can play two solid 20-minute halves of basketball.
“We played about 37 minutes of basketball today, ” Combs said. “But again, until we understand the 40-minute game we’re going to continue to struggle. We put ourselves in a position to win today, and we just didn’t take it when it was ours.”
Reach Marcelino Benito Jr. at [email protected].
