OU falls short against IUPUI in Horizon League quarterfinal
ROCHESTER » With bookend struggles in the first and fourth quarters, Oakland University’s season met its untimely end Tuesday with an 86-64 loss to IUPUI in the quarterfinals of the Horizon League women’s basketball tournament.
Though the score intermittently tightened through the middle portion of the game, the Golden Grizzlies remained hampered by the slow start that saw them fall behind by as many as 16 points early on.
Seeded fourth, Oakland was granted no favor by drawing a
tournament matchup with IUPUI, which won the conference a year ago and may have again this season if not for six games cancelled due to COVID-19 complications. The Jaguars entered as the fifth seed despite an 11-3 conference record.
“When you play a team like them—the defending champions—you can’t give up 86 points and expect to win,” Oakland coach Jeff Tungate said in comments on ESPN+ afterward. “We’ll have to get better on the defensive end throughout the summer and fall. I’m proud of our kids. It’s been a good season and now we’ve got something to move forward with going into next year.”
On the defensive end, the Golden Grizzlies had the Herculean task of trying to contain the three-time conference Player of the Year, senior Macee Williams. Nothing really worked against her, as Williams dominated the paint and matched her season high of 28 points on 12-of-20 shooting to go with nine rebounds.
“Obviously Macee is a great player and we tried to change how we guarded her a little bit,” Tungate said. “We let her go 1-on-1 a little bit because we didn’t want their other players to hurt us. They have so many weapons, we said at halftime we’d have to pick our poison.”
There were times Oakland appeared on the verge of mounting a comeback as the Golden Grizzlies trimmed their once daunting deficit to seven or eight points on either side of the halftime break. Those moments of progress were met with counterpunches from IUPUI, however.
Oakland’s 7-0 run midway through the third quarter made it 52-45, but consecutive baskets by Williams quickly reset the margin back to the 11-point spread of halftime.
Williams notched the first two baskets of the fourth quarter as well, followed later by back-to-back 3-pointers by IUPUI’s Sydney Roule and Natalie Andersen that blew the game wide open for the closing stretch.
The Golden Grizzlies shot just 36.4 percent from the floor and were out-rebounded 50 to 30.
IUPUI (14-4 overall) advanced to the Horizon League semifinals on Monday, March 8 at Indiana Farmers Coliseum in Indianapolis.
Oakland was paced offensively Tuesday by junior Kahlaijah Dean’s 13 points, with senior Autumn Kissman contributing 10 points and sophomore Breanne Beatty adding eight.
The Golden Grizzlies concluded the season with a .500 record of 12-12 overall and figure to return at least seven of their 10 highest scorers next season.
“The fact that we were able to complete a season, get all of our conference games in, and get to the conference tournament, if you had told me that at the beginning of the season when we had (COVID-19) cases in early November, I would have said there’s no way we’d get to this day,” Tungate said. “That says a lot about our kids, their dedication, and their commitment.”