Middle Tennessee women’s basketball (6-7, 1-0) shut down Kennesaw State (7-5, 0-1) 60-47, riding a strong performance from Alayna Contreras and Blair Baugus in its Conference USA opener.
Contreras started the scoring for the Lady Raiders with a knockdown three pointer. The basket would be Contreras’ 1,001 career point at the Division I level.
The Minneapolis native went on to score 18 points along with a perfect night at the charity strip going 4-of-4 and a team high five assists.
“This is a great way to start conference play,” Contreras said on WGNS radio. “I think this feels really fresh for us, it’s a new season, we’re 1-0 and I think a lot of things clicked for us which we were hoping for in the preseason.”
Baugus set a new career high in points with 25 and 10 rebounds on her way to a sixth double-double of the season.
MTSU saw little action from the bench as Yu Han Lin and Stanislava Kabernick each played for four minutes.
“Stacy [Kabernick] came in, did a pretty good job, and we didn’t get to play Yu Han much tonight, and we were looking at one or two others but when we got things going, I didn’t want to change,” head coach Rick Insell said on WGNS radio.
The Lady Raiders had many things trend in the right direction against the Owls with the Contreras performance along with winning the turnover battle and shutting down CUSA preseason all-conference player Keyarah Berry.
Middle Tennessee committed 16 turnovers on the night, tied for its season low while forcing 22 turnovers. The 22 forced turnovers became 21 points for the Lady Raiders.
That is a low for the year, and a few of the turnovers were the Lady Raiders throwing the ball away in an unforced situation, Insell said.
Sophomore guard Savannah Davis had a slow night, according to the stat sheet but defensively limited Berry, the Owls leading scorer, to nine points on 4-of-10 shooting in 37 minutes.
The coaching staff challenged Davis and she stepped up tonight, got beat a few times and Berry was able to score, but Davis overall did a good job, Insell said.
“We got a couple of interceptions,” Insell said. “We cut some lanes, and we haven’t been doing that, if you want to know the fact, I think defensively tonight, we did it.”
MTSU continues its CUSA opening road trip to face Jacksonville State in Jacksonville, Alabama on Jan. 4.
“A lot of people think we’ll go in and party tonight,” Insell said. “No. We will not.”
The team will watch two games tonight in preparation and will go over the scouting report for Jax State with the walk-through tomorrow morning, Insell said.
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