Offensive rebounds lift Jacks over ORU
January 12, 2019
Behind a dominant rebounding effort, South Dakota State’s women’s basketball team overcame poor shooting in a 68-55 win over Oral Roberts Saturday in Frost Arena.
Three Jackrabbits grabbed five or more offensive rebounds, paced by six from sophomore Myah Selland.
For the game, SDSU held a 21-6 advantage on the offensive glass and outscored the Golden Eagles 23-0 on second-chance opportunities.
“When you’ve got a day where Macy [Miller] isn’t scoring the ball the way she normally does and when (SDSU’s scoring) is all coming on second-chance it’s a helpless feeling as a coach,” ORU head coach Misti Cussen said.
Coming into Saturday’s contest, SDSU and Oral Roberts were tied with North Dakota atop the Summit League women’s basketball standings, meaning the winner would take over sole possession of first place.
SDSU would make the most of the opportunity, though it wasn’t pretty at times.
Neither team could find an offensive rhythm for much of the afternoon.
ORU shot just 35.3 percent from the field, only slightly better than the 33.3 percent mark posted by the Jacks. SDSU particularly struggled from 3-point range, going just 5-for-26 from behind the arc.
“Usually we can shoot a high percentage when we’re working the ball inside and getting kick-outs for open threes, so we might have settled for a couple threes early on in the game,” Selland said. “It’s O.K. if we don’t shoot too well from the 3-point line but we have our defense to keep us in a game.”
It was a zone defensive look from the Golden Eagles that gave the Jackrabbits fits early with visible frustration coming from SDSU head coach Aaron Johnston on the bench.
“We had a plan but didn’t really get to our spots in the first half … we just weren’t very sharp,” Johnston said after the game. “In the second half, I thought we were better with it. We got good looks, we didn’t turn it over, we had spacing, but in the first half we were just a little bit out of sync.”
Selland and senior Madison Guebert led the Jacks in scoring, netting 19 and 14 points respectively. Junior Tagyn Larson added 11 points and eight rebounds in the contest.
Lakota Beatty, ORU’s leading scorer on the season put up 15 points to pace her team but found little help from the supporting cast. Only one other Golden Eagle reached double figures.
The Jacks will be back in action at 7 p.m. Friday, Jan 18 when they travel to take on North Dakota.