The Mavericks bounced back against Colorado Christian University after Friday night’s loss to Metro State University- Denver.
Colorado Mesa University (CMU) beat the Cougars 78-58 as graduate student guard Daniella Turner led the team in scoring and rebounds as she recorded a double-double with 22 points and 10 rebounds.
It almost felt like the beginning of the season for the team after not playing for 27 days and the rust that the team had the day prior was not there as the team clicked right off of the bat against CCU.
“Not having played for a whole month, you have those little jitters you have right at the beginning of the season so it was good to get that rust off. I feel like the first half we played together as a unit but the second half we had some mental lapses and things were not clicking the right way so we got to change that,” Turner said.
The Cougars came out of the gate playing very physical and CMU responded with physicality of their own. The team responded well to the physicality though as they scored 22 points in the first quarter.
Turner was able to get her jump shot in the net early and helped her team get ahead early. Graduate student guard Mariah Martin also found her rhythm early on as she scored seven points in the first ten minutes of the game.
Being able to take advantage of second chance points off of the offensive rebounds came in big time for the Mavericks throughout the game and that started in the first quarter. They were able to score 11 times off of second chances.
The Mavericks defense did their job throughout the first half as they held CCU to 24 points total going into halftime. Graduate student guard Sophie Anderson had a big defensive game for the Mavericks as she finished with eight rebounds with five of them being on the defensive end.
Anderson also had a big game offensively as she scored a career high 18 points with nine of those coming in the second quarter. She was able to take advantage of finding her spots and good passes from her teammates.
“They found me really well when they collapsed on them they found me for kick outs and stuff so they understand that they are going to get a lot of pressure and giving me the ball too also opens them up for a shot later on. There was good movement all around too,” Anderson said.
The mental blocks that the Mavericks had in the second half gave the Cougars a chance to get back in the game. While they outscored CMU in the final 20 minutes it was still not enough to get back into the game.
The Mavericks will head back out to the front range this weekend as they take on Colorado School of Mines on Jan. 21 and Regis University on Jan. 22.
