Lady Quakers fall to Otterbein

Streck scores 20 for Lady Quakers

|Box Score|

December 7, 2005

WILMINGTON, Ohio — Otterbein College outscored Wilmington College 6-0 over the final 1:54 to hand the Lady Quakers an 85-81 setback in Ohio Athletic Conference play Wednesday at Fred Raizk Arena.

The win moves Otterbein to 1-1 in the OAC, 4-2 overall, while Wilmington drops to 5-2, 1-1 in conference play. Wilmington head coach Jerry Scheve said the result is proof of the battles that await everyone this season in the OAC.

"There¹s a lot of good teams in this league," Scheve said. "Whoever wins this league is going to lose some basketball games. We unfortunately lost one tonight against a good team. We had our chances. We just didn¹t come through. The ball didn¹t bounce our way. We¹ll be back."

The matchup featured the top two offenses in the OAC, with Wilmington averaging 82 points per game to Otterbein¹s 77. The first half was a standoff, with Wilmington enjoying a 17-10 lead thanks to a Gina Hyle (Lawrenceburg, Ind./McAuley) trey. Otterbein, paced by the perimeter shooting of Michelle Keeney and Laura Roth, quickly erased the deficit with a 21-7 surge to take a 31-24 lead. Wilmington sophomore Katie Streck¹s (Dayton/Carroll) three-pointer knotted the score for the eighth time as the squads went to the locker room tied 41-41.

"They shot the ball a lot better from the three-point line than we anticipated," Scheve said. "The two kids that shot it and hurt us are the two kids we felt would hurt us, but we didn¹t do a very good job of guarding them. They created a lot of matchup problems for us. The times they went on their runs were really when we just had some mismatches, and they took advantage of it."

Wilmington forward Erica Smith (Union/Northmont) stuck a three-pointer at 14:19 to give the Lady Quakers a 57-55 lead, but Otterbein¹s Ana Gamble went on a driving binge, scoring 10 points in a three-minute stretch as the Cardinals took a 66-65 lead.

Wilmington got strong inside play from Streck and Kelly Peters (Spencerville/Spencerville), while Shawna Thomas (Middletown/Middletown) and Hyle came off the bench to complement the guard play of Sam Hood (Lockbourne/Teays Valley). Graduate center Danielle Holbrook was Otterbein¹s inside answer, scoring 11 of her 15 points in the second half — four in the final 1:32 — after Smith had given WC an 81-79 lead with back-to-back threes. Freshman Sarah Esterkamp provided the dagger, collecting a loose ball and scoring to give OC a four-point lead with six seconds to play.

Streck led the Lady Quakers with 20 points, Peters added 15 and Smith scored 14. Thomas scored nine for WC, Jackie Hauke (Sardinia/Whiteoak) scored eight and Hyle contributed seven. Hood scored six points and handed out nine assists. Gamble led the Cardinals with 17 points, Roth scored 16, Holbrook — who joined the 1,000-point club with her first basket — scored 15 and Esterkamp added 13.

Wilmington — led by Peters with 14 rebounds and Streck with nine — out-rebounded Otterbein, 39-28.

Wilmington will play its first road game of the season Saturday as the Lady Quakers travel to Heidelberg, which suffered its first loss of the season Wednesday, 63-57, to John Carroll.