Northwest Missouri State Women’s basketball team is off to a 3-1 start, running ahead of last year under new coach Mark Kellogg and Meridee Scott was named to the all-tournament team at the Winstead-Reeves Classic last weekend.
The Bearcats are a very young squad this year, with three seniors on the squad along with many sophomores and a freshman starter.
One of the most improved players from last year’s six-win season is Maryville product Meridee Scott, who is always one of the quickest players on the floor and who has emerged as one of the team’s leading scorers. Friday and Saturday, she earned her first career starts; she was obviously not used to her new role as she didn’t come off the bench when she was announced Friday night.
Everyone had reason to wonder if it would be more of the same when Northwest suffered a 50-point exhibition loss to Division I power Iowa State. However, they turned around and beat Peru State in their other exhibition game before the real season started.
Northwest got off to another rocky start as they dug themselves into a 15-2 hole against Quincy, a playoff team from last year. But Meridee Scott came off the bench to spark the Bearcats and led the team with 21 points as they came back and won 65-50. Freshman Tember Schechinger played almost the whole game and added 14 and added 8 boards; Ashleigh Nelson contributed 10.
The offense began clicking much better against Tabor as Northwest showed that they had many different threats to score in their 93-50 win over Tabor. Nelson and Annie Matthews had 14 each and Maggie Marnin and Ashley Thayer had 13 each as Northwest was able to establish the post early on offense, get a lot of steals on defense, and put away Tabor in the second half to win going away. Nelson added 8 steals for the Bearcats.
But Coach Kellogg was not satisfied as he felt that the team needed to do a better job of getting out of the gate early. The new coach showed that his focus was always on how the team could improve regardless of the outcome of the game.
Against Southwest Minnesota State, a rebuilding team, the Bearcats finally got off to the start that Kellogg wanted as they jumped out to a 7-0 start and went on to lead 53-21 before winning going away, 93-46. Ashleigh Nelson fueled the hot start; despite food poisoning, she hit six 3-pointers in the first half and led the scoring with a career high 18 points. Meridee Scott added 14, Marnin had 12, and Annie Matthews and Tember Schechinger each had 10. Everyone who got in scored for Northwest. The rebounding was much better as the team collected 48; Annie Matthews collected 11 and Maggie Marnin added 10.
But the bubble finally burst against a strong William Jewel team that had beaten Northwest last year and who had all of their starters back from last year. Northwest could not handle the pressure defense of Jewell as they turned the ball over 25 times in the loss and shot a season-low 41.3% in a 59-55 loss. Meridee Scott led the scoring once again with 14 points and Ashleigh Nelson followed with 12. Annie Matthews collected 8 boards for Northwest. Northwest could not hold a 54-45 lead in the last four minutes as Jewell came back and won in the closing seconds.
Northwest showed definite improvement from last year and will look to build on it as they travel to Colorado.
No comments:
Post a Comment