EL PASO, Texas (November 20, 2021) – The Northern Arizona women's basketball team made a second half push, but a 20-point halftime deficit proved too much to overcome in a 72-62 loss to UTEP Saturday night in the Don Haskins Center. The Lumberjacks fell to 1-3 this season, while the Miners remained undefeated running their season-opening winning streak to four.
"It was a tale of two halves," said head coach
Loree Payne. "We came out and we knew UTEP was going to press us the entire game and we played into their hands in the first half. We settled for a lot of contested shots and that's outside of our offense. We dug ourselves a hole, but we responded really well in the second half. We need to put together 40 minutes especially against a team of the caliber like UTEP."
NAU outscored UTEP by 10 in the second half with sophomore
Emily Rodabaugh all 15 of her team-leading point total coming after halftime. Rodabaugh connected on 4-of-6 from behind the arc for the second consecutive game, and also added four rebounds and two blocks to her stat line in just 19 minutes of action.
Behind Rodabaugh, senior
Miki'ala Maio scored a season-high 11 points to accompany a career-high seven assists. Three other Lumberjacks – senior
Khiarica Rasheed, redshirt junior
Nina Radford and senior
Lauren Orndoff – each finished with eight points.
Despite the balanced scoring, NAU shot just 41.1 percent from the field compared to a 44.8 percent clip by UTEP. The Lumberjacks also committed 19 turnovers leading to 23 Miner points and were outrebounded, 43-30, with 16 of UTEP's total coming on the offensive glass.
Katia Gallegos paced four Miners in double-digit scoring with a game-high 19 points, shooting 8-for-10 from the field and also tallying seven rebounds and five assists.
The 'Jacks dug themselves a big hole in the first half, committing 11 turnovers, which the Miners converted into 14 points prior to the intermission. Coupled with only 37 percent shooting, the Lumberjacks went into the break trailing 44-24.
After UTEP opened the game with a 7-2 run, Radford drilled a three to tie it at 7-7 at the 6:23 mark of the first quarter. However, NAU only managed two more field goals the rest of the period as UTEP capitalized on six Lumberjack turnovers to score half of its 20 first quarter points off those miscues.
The Miners, who led 20-11 at the end of the first period, extended that lead in the second quarter as they made 10-of-20 from the field. The Miners made more field goals than the Lumberjacks attempted (15) in the second quarter in building NAU's largest halftime deficit of the young season.
Consecutive layups by Orndoff and redshirt freshman
Teionni McDaniel kept the Lumberjack deficit at single digits, 24-15, through the first two minutes and change of the second quarter. However, UTEP followed with a 10-2 run over the next five minutes to open up its largest lead until the Miners scored the final five points of the half to take a 44-24 halftime lead.
NAU slowly chipped away at its deficit, climbing within 50-37 Rodabaugh's first trey midway through the third quarter. But UTEP quickly extend its lead back out to 19 within a two-minute span and took a 59-43 lead into the fourth.
There, NAU made one final push chopping the UTEP advantage to single digits following a Rodabaugh three and a pair of Orndoff free throws. The 64-55 margin with 3:31 remaining in the game would be the closest NAU would get though.
The Lumberjacks outshot the Miners, 44.8 percent to 40.7 percent, over the final 20 minutes, while taking advantage of UTEP's sloppy play. The Miners committed 13 turnovers in the second half, which the Lumberjacks turned into 14 points.
"We made a lot better decisions with the ball (in the second half)," Payne said. "We were really intentional in taking advantage of 2-on-1 or 3-on-2 situations and if we didn't have the advantage, we put our playmakers in positions to make plays. There's a lot of lessons that we'll take into the first weekend of conference."
NAU will have nearly two weeks off to prepare for its conference opener on Thursday, Dec. 2 versus Weber State in the Rolle Activity Center at 6 p.m. The first weekend of conference play, which also features a 2 p.m. showdown against the defending Big Sky Champions Idaho State on Dec. 4, will begin an extended stretch of home games for the Lumberjacks.
The 'Jacks will play six straight in Flagstaff over the next month before they head back out on the road to UC San Diego on Dec. 21.
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