In their final game of the regular season, women's basketball came out playing timid and suffered a scoring drought from the end of the first half until five minutes into the second half.
With the game mattering little in the standings and Buffalo having already clinched a home playoff game, the Bulls lost to the Kent State Golden Flashes on Tuesday by a final score of 73-59.
Senior forward Lindsay Shearer, who recorded game highs in points with 24 and rebounds with 13, led Kent State.
Bulls senior guard Brooke Meunier, who finished the game -- and her Buffalo regular season career -- with nine points and four rebounds, said that Shearer has been getting better with every time they play.
"She's definitely gotten better every year," Meunier said. "She's shooting threes better and she's better off the dribble. She's a great player, I'm not taking anything away from her, but she obviously works very hard in the off season."
Shearer has always played very well against the Bulls (10-17, 5-11 Mid-American Conference). In eight games against UB, she has averaged 16.65 points per game.
Bulls head coach Linda Hill-MacDonald had planned for the Bulls to double-team Shearer every time she had the ball, but that plan did not work. In fact, Hill-MacDonald described it after the game as nearly the exact opposite of a double-team.
"Shearer had almost uncontested shots every time she touched it. We were supposed to be double-teaming her, but the help wasn't there," Hill-MacDonald said.
In contrast to the Bulls' porous defense, sophomore forward Heather Turner had another stellar performance. She ended the game with a team-high 21 points and 11 rebounds, which is her eighth double-double on the season, and the seventh time she scored over 20 points in a game.
"I just tried to get up there, finish strong. Look around in the block, move in and go," Turner said.
The Bulls got minutes from every available player on their bench, including 16 minutes from sophomore forward Barbora Homolov?Ae?, in which she went 3-for-7 and scored eight points. Junior forward Viorica Badinici also played 12 minutes, and even four minutes from the rarely seen sophomore guard Diana Orozco Gollaz.
"Everybody has to play at this point," Hill-MacDonald said. "We've got to be using the healthy bodies that we have. I thought Barbora gave us quality minutes tonight and we need to expect that from her down the road. If she can play like that tonight she can play like that down the stretch... It's time for everybody to step up."
This was Meunier's final regular season game for the Bulls, and it was possibly her last chance to defeat the Golden Flashes, as the Bulls are 0-17 all-time against Kent (19-8, 12-4 MAC). However, she is hopeful in the team's ability to rectify her disappointment.
"We can throw it back in their face by getting farther in the tournament than they do," Meunier said.
Since Meunier is the only player still on the roster who was on the team the last time the Bulls had a home playoff game, she has been giving advice to the rest of her teammates.
"I talked outside the locker room before the game, and I told them what we've done in the past doesn't matter anymore," she said. "We have to learn from our past games, but it's cutthroat when the tournament comes, going all-out every minute, because the seniors on the other team don't want it to be their last game."
Meunier is confident that the Bulls will make it to Cleveland for the second round of the Kraft MAC Tournament.
"We have no reason to not be confident. We're playing in our own house," Meunier said. "When we played well, we held them scoreless for four and a half minutes, and we were down 21 or 23 and cut it to nine points. So we know we can play with anyone in the conference."
The Bulls are going to play at home on Saturday at 2 p.m. against the Toledo Rockets (9-16, 4-11 MAC). Though they will be at home, the Bulls will be nowhere near full-strength for this game.
"(Freshman guard Rachelle Matthys) is coming off a stress fracture and we don't want to have her tweak that and go out again," Hill-MacDonald said. "Jamie (Schiebner) is doubtful. We've got Rayna (Brown) out with a stress-fracture. Tomi (Abayomi) is out with a shoulder injury, she's going to have surgery. We're down to nine healthy bodies right now, maybe 10 depending on Jamie's status."
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
