SIU Women’s basketball falls in final regular season game to UNI as offense struggles

By Ryan Scott, Staff Reporter

March 6, 2021

Southern Illinois Women’s basketball (8-15,5-13 MVC) fell to the Northern Iowa Panthers (14-10,11-7 MVC) by a final score of 64-41 on Saturday evening at the Banterra center.

Head coach Cindy Stein said she thinks the team is just out of gas.

“I’ve got a lot of kids with a lot of minutes between Walker, Silvey, Catcher, Link, Mccallister and Pudlowski. I think it showed this weekend and unfortunately they put a lot of minutes in yesterday,” Stein said.

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The Salukis were led by senior guard, Makenzie Silvey, with ten points. UNI was led by redshirt senior, Megan Maahs, with 14 points.

Stein spoke on the effectiveness of the UNI offense after they shot over 50 percent for the game and the defensive effort for SIU today.

“They hit some shots, there was one point where they took some more acrobatic shots than I’ve seen and they made them. Our defense has got to be better. We had a lot of undisciplined tired fouls,” Stein said.

UNI opened the game strong offensively and they got out in front 9-2 after a 7-0 run with all the points coming from Panthers freshman guard Emerson Green.

SIU tried to cut back in the lead and cut it to four but the Panthers were able to take a 20-11 lead at the end of the first quarter.

The second quarter was a defensive one as the Panthers outscored the Salukis 9-7 over all ten minutes to take a halftime lead of 29-18.

In the third quarter the Salukis couldn’t catch up as UNI opened up the lead to as much as 26 points.

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Both teams gave their bench a lot of minutes in the fourth quarter as the result wasn’t in doubt and the game ended with a final of 64-41.

The Salukis will now look towards the MVC tournament on Thursday where they will take on the nine seed Indiana State Sycamores.

Stein spoke on what the team needs to do to be prepared for the conference tournament.

“We’re gonna have a lot more time to do that, we’ve played Indiana State twice and we know what they’re gonna do. Now it’s just a matter of us working on our timing, our tempo,” Stein said

Sports reporter Ryan Scott can be reached at [email protected] or on twitter @RyanscottDE.

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