Down 27 points in the last two minutes of the first half, the Kent State women’s basketball team did everything in its power to muster up some second half magic, but ultimately fell short on a late Ball State run.

Pulling in as close as five points 48-43 with 12:29 left in the game, the Flashes (5-14, 4-5 Mid-American Conference) were just too fatigued to get over the hump and fell hard to the Cardinals 75-56.

 “We had a couple possessions where we actually turned the ball over and then they got an and-1,” junior forward Diamon Beckford said. “Things started going on a little bit of a snowball effect from there, which I think really hurt us.”

Out of the gates, the Flashes struggled with converting on possessions while Ball State pestered the team on defense. With 9:08 left in the first half, the Flashes trailed 28-10 and were not executing on either end of the floor.

What bothered head coach Bob Lindsay most was four of his five starters played 36 or more minutes while bench players struggled to make an impact on the game. Where his bench made a successful impact on the game was in fouls. By the eight-minute mark, the Cardinals were shooting two free throws at the line with every foul.

“We get hurt a lot with depth issues and of course with the young players out there, they are just not going to play great when we want them to,” Lindsay said. “You can’t do what we did today where you have starters playing 37, 38 minutes and expend the level of effort they had to expend to get back in, and then expect them to play the rest of the game without any subs at all.”

Each starter was especially aware of the minutes they had to put into the effort when the team ran out of juice at the end of the game.

“I think we dug ourselves such a big hole at that time and point that it was really hard to come back,” Beckford said. “We expelled a lot of energy going on that run and we just didn’t have enough energy to get over that hill.”

“I did think at the end there we did run out of gas,” junior guard Tamzin Barroilhet said. “I know my legs are tired.” 

On top of the lack of minutes from the bench, the Flashes’ bench was outscored in the game 44-3 with junior center Leslie Schaefer scoring all three points.

“We were just obviously not ourselves in the first half,” Barroilhet said. “I think no one felt anything was going our way, so we kind of just re-pumped ourselves up and we were like ‘These girls are not better than us right now and we are letting them do it to us.’ So we just picked it up and it started going our way, and unfortunately we let them get to us a second time.”    

Barroilhet finished the night with 14 points, only behind freshman guard Itziar Llobet’s 17-point performance.  

Things don’t get any easier for the Flashes with the Toledo Rockets stopping by Saturday at noon for a game to be featured on SportsTime Ohio. 

Contact Matt Lofgren at [email protected] and @MLofgrenDKS.