Valentine’s Day ‘no fun at all’ for Wright State women’s basketball
FAIRBORN — Before the game — as a fun way for the Wright State women’s basketball team to acknowledge Valentine’s Day — red postcards featuring pictures of various Raiders and cute sayings were handed out to the fans at the Nutter Center.
Senior forward Rachel Loobie’s message said: “I Loobie You!”
The card for Cara VanKempen, the fifth-year forward, read “I Cara Lot About You!
And the Cupid call of head coach Kari Hoffman was: “I’m Kari-ying Your Love with Me!”
After Wednesday’s game with Youngstown State, Hoffman was asked what she thought about Valentine’s Day now.
“It was a big drag!” she said as she managed a weary smile. “It was no fun at all.”
So what happened between postcard and postgame?
Wright State found out that sometimes — as the old Nazareth song proclaimed — love hurts.
Youngstown State — a team Wright State had beaten handily on the road at the end of December — led the entire game, routing the Raiders, 72-52.
Shooting poorly and not defending, WSU trailed 26-15 by the end of the first quarter and 45-23 at the half.
At halftime Hoffman addressed her reeling team: “I told them to fix our mentality. We had a lack of focus on the offensive end…uhhh…I don’t have a better word besides ‘pouting.’ There was just a bit of pouting out there. I said we had to fix that first and foremost.
“We said we had to hold them to basically under 10 the next two quarters and we had to explode in one of those quarters. And we were confident we could do that. That never happened, but I think everyone in the locker room did believe it.”
Although WSU did outscore the Penguins, 29-27, in the second half, it couldn’t overcome the massive firsthalf deficit.
“Whenever we did have a little bit of a push, Youngstown always had an answer,” Hoffman said. “They always had a dagger. We’d come down and drill a 3 and they’d go down, make one pass, and drill a 3.”
Wright State shot 28.8% from the field (making 17 of 59 shots) and was a miserable 12.5% (4 of 32) from 3-point range.
Meanwhile, the Penguins shot 50% from the floor (30 of 60) and, even though they were ranked 303rd in the nation in 3-point accuracy, they made 44.4% of their shots from beyond the arc (8 of 18).
They outrebounded WSU, 45-30.
Wright State’s most accurate shooters were all off the mark:
Point guard Alexis Hutchison, who leads the Horizon League in scoring at 18.7 points per game, went 1-for-12 from the field and 0-for-7 from 3-point range and finished with six points. Layne Ferrell was 1-for-8 from long range.
Lauren Scott was 1-for-5 and Kacee Baumhower, who led the team with 15 points, was 2 for 8 from 3-point range. Loobie started but did not score.
“We were ice cold,” Hoffman said. “We took some really bad shots and we didn’t take the ones we normally do.”
The loss dropped WSU to 15-12 and fourth in league at 9-7. Youngstown State, which has won four straight games, three of them on the road, is 12-14 and 8-8.
This was one of several games where the Raiders had a tortoise-like slow start, but in the past, they had always been able to claw their way back.
“We couldn’t climb out of it this time,” Hoffman said after the game. “I told them, ‘You’ve got to be more focused and sharp to start the game.’ I don’t know how many times we need to get kicked in the rear end in the first quarter to believe that or fix that or find a way. But we will find a way. It will happen.
“I told them it’s better for this to happen to us now than in a couple of weeks in the tournament. It’s a good lesson to learn.”
And on this Valentine’s Day, the Raiders learned that sometimes love hurts.