Allen Community College’s women were downright dominant on the defensive end Tuesday, allowing visiting Northern Oklahoma College-Enid just five field goals.
On top of that, Allen out-rebounded NOC-Enid by a whopping 60 to 36 margin and forced 19 turnovers.
But Red Devil head coach Lesie Crane was anything but happy.
That’s because after a blistering start, opening a 22-8 lead by the latter portions of the first quarter, Allen, too, struggled mightily to score from there.
The two teams shot a combined 9 of 51 — a frigid 17% — in the second half of Allen’s 54-30 win.
The victory keeps Allen’s record spotless at 7-0, but as Crane noted, there’s plenty of room for improvement.
“We lost our focus in the second half,” Crane said. “We missed layup after layup, after layup, after layup, after layup, after layup. And it wasn’t like we were shooting bad shots. We were working the offense to get good looks, but we weren’t focused on the room, or focused on the backboard.”
Crane admitted the Red Devils may have been a bit leg-weary by the time the final buzzer sounded. Tuesday was the fourth game in eight days for a squad that has only one contributor who played for Allen last season.
Crane also noted the strong play underneath Allen’s Aaliyah Brown, who led the way with a 12-point, 14-rebound effort, and reserves Yolaine Luthi and Nikki Gear, who added 12 and 11 points, respectively. Luthi is in her second week on the team after playing volleyball through the fall.
“Yolaine has been doing a lot for us,” Crane said. “She and Aalliyah and Nikki were strong, but they’ve got to clean up their shooting percentage. They could be shooting 80%.”
Mafalda Chambel was once again a defensive force, with four steals, to go with seven points, five rebounds and four assists. Tawhirikura Doyle added eight points.
Lyndee Mikesell scored 16 to lead NOC-Enid, going 10 of 10 from the line.
“I don’t like our 10 turnovers after halftime,” Crane said.
She also noted Allen sent NOC-Enid to the free throw line too often, where the visitors hit 17 of 20 attempts.
“We had 11 assists tonight, but if we were hitting our shots, we could have had close to 30,” Crane said.
