After being down 20 points in the third quarter, the Norse started to chip away at the lead as Green Bay was leading 66-53 at the halfway point of the fourth quarter.
NKU pushes the tempo, bringing the ball up the floor quickly, getting into their action. The ball gets in the hands of Mia Jordan, who tries to hand it off to Karina Bystry, but quickly turns around and shoots, making the deep two-point basket.
A couple of minutes later, with the game sitting at a standstill, Tysha Rushton moves the ball around as she gets in on the low wing, working her magic, and she has her back to the basket. Rushton does a quick spin, fading away from the hoop, looking like NBA legend Dirk Nowitzki. “Swish,” she hits nothing but the bottom of the net, cutting the lead now to just 11.
Mya Meredith then steals the ball, finishing the layup, cutting the game within nine, but it was too late as the clock hit 57 seconds. The Norse played the foul game and lost it as Green Bay extended their lead back, winning by 10, 70-60. This loss moves the Norse to 3-7 on the season and 0-1 in conference play.
The Norse had three players in double figures, all with 11 points: Meredith, Maddie Moody and Kylee Hunt. Meredith shot 5-9 from the field and had three steals and two blocks. Five of her points came in the third quarter, where she had back-to-back buckets. Moody had seven rebounds on the night.
All of Hunt’s points came in the first half of the ball game, where she imposed her will, but then faded away in the second half. She shot 2-11 from the field, but hit all six of her free throws.
Green Bay was led by two players who scored 13 points each. Meghan Schultz was one of them as she was getting her way down low. She also tacked on seven rebounds. Jenna Guyer was the other star player for Green Bay. She shot 3-6 from three, having four rebounds and four steals.
The game started out close as each team traded buckets. Then, the Phoenix began to cash in on the three’s to end out the first quarter only up by four, 19-15. The second quarter was similar to the first, but again with a huge spark from Green Bay to end the quarter, which kept pushing the Norse away as they led by 12 going into the halftime break.
Where the game got out of hand for the Norse was in the third quarter, as Green Bay came out guns blazing. They went on an 8-0 run to start the third and never looked back. Northern Kentucky chipped away in the fourth, outscoring Green Bay 18-10, but it wasn’t enough.
Head Coach of the Norse, Jeff Hans, knows this is not the way he wanted his team to start out conference play.
“Not the ideal way to start off league play on opening up against Green Bay and playing that way tonight, like we did, especially when we shot the ball, I thought we got a lot of good looks in the first half, and just couldn’t get in to go down and and confidence just wasn’t there on that part of the time like it maybe has been the last few games. So that’s a little frustrating as we start league play that way tonight,” Hans said.
The Norse fought to the very end, cutting within single digits in the fourth quarter, and Hans believes that fighting to the very end and not giving up was the definition of this game.
“That’s a key thing to take away from tonight, is that we didn’t quit. We outscored them 18 to 10 in the fourth quarter.” Hans said. “So we got to do that more often and execute and have that urgency.”