Central Michigan University Athletics
Central Michigan University
NIU
Chippewas Roll Past Northern Illinois
1/13/2016 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Cullen Maksimowski, CMUChippewas.com
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. -- Fact: Play soft defense against the Central Michigan women's basketball team and the Chippewas will find away to hurt you.
This was evident Wednesday as the Chippewas eclipsed the 90-point mark for the second-straight game to run away with a 95-63 Mid-American Conference win over Northern Illinois in McGuirk Arena.
The Chippewas improve to 9-6 overall and 3-1 in the MAC. NIU slips to 8-7, 1-3.
The Chippewas outscored the Huskies, 24-8, in the second quarter to lead 45-28 at the half. CMU's 32-point margin of victory is its largest of the season.
CMU dominated NIU on the glass, outrebounding the Huskies 61-34 and held them to a 34.8 field goal percentage. The Chippewas shot 44.6 percent including 37.1 percent from long distance.
"We are becoming more of a well-rounded team," CMU coach Sue Guevara said. "We're establishing inside and establishing outside and I was very pleased with how we rebounded the basketball against the best rebounding team in the MAC."
CMU is 12-2 in its last 14 meetings with the Huskies.
Sophomore guard Cassie Breen paced the Chippewas, scoring 23 points, which included a 7-for-14 performance from 3-point territory.
"It's a great feeling to have a team not really key in on you defensively," said Breen, who came into the game ranked 21st in the nation in 3-point shooting percentage. "It's a little bit disrespectful, but they let me shoot and now they have to respect me next time."
Junior Jasmine Harris came off the bench to add a career-high 18 points as CMU held a commanding 37-10 advantage in bench scoring. Harris finished 7-of-13 from the field, including 4-of-8 from 3-point range.
"I give a lot of the credit to (guard) Amani Corley," Harris said. "She came off the bench and she found us, the shots we were taking if you noticed, we were hitting them because we were wide open.
"She was hitting us in the right spots and it was just a matter of knocking them down and that's exactly what we did."
Corley, a sophomore, finished with six points, eight rebounds and a career-high seven assists.
"Amani was great, she was penetrating in, hitting open players and she was finishing," Guevara said. "If you look what we were able to do offensively with our starting backcourt in Pres (Hudson) and Ree Ree (Turner) not in the game a lot.
"They sat half of the game and we were still able to push the ball and score because of our bench play and I think that says a lot."
Sophomore forward Tinara Moore continued her stretch of stellar performances, notching her fourth-consecutive double-double, scoring 12 points and bringing down 11 rebounds. She has eight double-doubles on the season.
After struggling to stay out of foul trouble for much of the last month, Junior Jewel Cotton posted her first double-double since Dec. 12 in a loss to Illinois. She finished with 10 points and tied her career-high with 11 rebounds.
Freshman Reyna Frost led all Chippewa rebounders with 14 to go along with seven points.
Kelly Smith scored 21 points to lead NIU.
The Chippewas, who have won five of their last seven starts, hit the road to take on MAC East-leading Ohio on Saturday at 1 p.m. Ohio is 12-3 and, at 4-0, the last unbeaten team in the conference. The Bobcats defeated Eastern Michigan, 71-64, on Wednesday for their seventh consecutive win.
CMU shares first place with Ball State and Toledo in the MAC West.
