Herald Staff report
HOUGHTON, Mich. In one respect, No. 1-ranked UND's 76-72 women's basketball loss to Michigan Tech here Saturday afternoon was beneficial.
"Now we need to bounce back," Sioux coach Gene Roebuck said. "We need to have good practices. It's hard to tell players you have to work hard when you beat teams by 50 and 90 points.
"Now, maybe we'll have good practices. In the past week, our practices haven't been as good as they should have been."
UND's game, hindered by 17 turnovers, wasn't as good as it should have been against unranked Michigan Tech, which won despite making only 39 percent of its field-goal attempts. However, the Huskies made 6 of their 14 3-point attempts (43 percent).
The road game was the first for the Sioux. And the defending national Division II champions have their next three games on the road, starting with Tuesday night's game at Minnesota-Morris a team that knocked off South Dakota State in Brookings, S.D.
"That won't be an easy game, either," Roebuck said.
The Sioux went to Houghton after beating three opponents by an average of 53.3 points per game.
Tech, meanwhile, came in at 2-1, and its loss was an 84-68 setback at Southern Indiana, the team UND defeated for last year's national championship.
UND led 28-21 on a Kami Winger layup with 6:17 left in the first half, but the Huskies went on a 15-7 run to end the half, highlighted by back-to-back 3-pointers by Megan Gardner and Clara Goggins.
Tech forwards Jenny Sorenson (21 points) and Allison Bailey (17) then came up big in the final half. Sorenson scored 14 of her points in the second half while Bailey, a reserve, scored 11 in the final 20 minutes.
UND never led in the second half and trailed 53-43 with 11:09 to play. But the Sioux came back, tying the game at 62-62 on a Katie Richards' layup with 4:38 to play. Sorenson, however, scored on a layup 19 seconds later.
Two Sorenson free throws with 38 seconds left gave Tech a 72-67 lead, but a Tiffany Pudenz 3-pointer cut the lead to 72-70.
"Instead of folding the tent, we did come back and make a game of it," Roebuck said. "We played pretty well in spurts, especially our perimeter players who worked really hard to get us back into the game."
Guards Jaime Pudenz (18) and Tiffany Pudenz (14) led the Sioux while Richards and Jenny Crouse both scored 11.
"We don't look at wins and losses right now as being the most important thing," Roebuck said. "This game won't determine the conference championship. From this game, maybe we can learn more than we did from our first three games."