Chippewas Hope to Keep Momentum as They Head to Memphis
12/5/2014 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Jared Porter, CMUChippewas.com
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. - The Central Michigan women's basketball team comes off a 2-0 performance in the South Point Thanksgiving Shootout in Las Vegas last weekend and travels to Tennessee for a non-conference matchup with Memphis (3-4) on Saturday, Nov. 6.
The Chippewas defeated Richmond, 61-56, and Oregon, 73-67, in Las Vegas to improve to 3-1.
Contribution from the bench and stout defense were two strengths from last weekend that stuck out most to CMU coach Sue Guevara.
"(Las Vegas) really gave me a lot of confidence in my bench," Guevara said. "In both of those games, our team wore the other team down. That was because of my ability to play nine people.
"It gave me confidence in our defense too. I thought we struggled offensively at times. But instead of getting frustrated, we hunkered down on the defensive end of the floor."
The Chippewas also received a major blow when Jewel Cotton, a 6-foot-2 forward, was lost for the season to a knee injury in the second half of the Oregon game. Cotton, a redshirt sophomore, was the lone non-senior starter for the Chippewas and she averaged 7.8 points and 6.3 rebounds per game.
"When she went down, we had some tears on the bench," Guevara said. "Everybody always concludes the worst and unfortunately it became true. But I thought our players rallied around that. When we came into practice after Vegas I said, `OK, what does Jewel bring to the table?'
"She rebounds, (gets) 50-50 balls, she takes charges, she has red-zone shots. I'm not looking for one person to take (all) that up, but I want to know who's going to take the charges, who's going to get rebounds."
Guevara suggested that a number of players, Cassandra Breen, Amari Corley and Chelsea Lynn among them, will be counted on to pick up the slack in Cotton's absence.
"It's kind of a variety of people who are going to do it for us," she said.
The Chippewas got a spark from their bench in Vegas as the Chippewa reserves outscored their Spider and Duck counterparts by a combined 38-25. CMU held Richmond and Oregon to a combined 36 percent shooting from the floor.
Two of the key players off the bench for CMU were senior Lorreal Jones and junior Da'Jourie Turner. Turner went 9-of-12 from the free throw line and added two rebounds against Richmond; Jones totaled nine points and six rebounds against Oregon.
"We have to keep up the momentum we're building with our defense and our bench this coming weekend against Memphis." Guevara said. "The things we preach and work on in practice are beginning to pay off. Now we have to stay consistent."
Memphis, which is coached by former CMU assistant Melissa McFerrin, is coming off a 65-60 win over Austin Peay on Tuesday that snapped a four-game losing streak. All four of the Tigers' losses were by single digits, falling to Illinois, 60-58; to Minnesota, 68-62; to Southern Illinois, 82-75; and to Arkansas Little Rock, 66-59. Those four teams are a combined 22-4.
"Memphis is very athletic," Guevara said. "They're very guard oriented. They have a couple big kids that like to get into the paint. I want us to get out and pressure a little bit.
"This team is somewhat similar to Kentucky, so we have a similar game plan. We want to keep them out of the paint, force them to take outside shots, get rebounds and get to the other end of the court."
The backcourt combination of Ariel Hearn and Mooriah Rowser leads the Tigers. Hearn, a junior, is averaging a team-high 17.5 points per game and has made 31 percent (18-of-59) of her three-point field goal attempts. Rowser averages 15.3 per game and is shooting at an 84 percent (26-of-31) clip from the free throw line.
Memphis' leading rebounder is 6-1 junior Brianna Wright, who, at 10.1 boards per game, sits just outside the top 50 rebounders in the nation.
McFerrin, who is in her seventh season at Memphis, was an assistant at CMU under Donita Davenport, helping lead the Chippewas to the Mid-American Conference regular-season championship in 1984-85 and runner-up finishes in '85-86 and '86-87.
