A loud slam echoed through Bank of America Arena early in the first half of the women’s basketball game against Washington Friday night. But this time, it wasn’t the sound of coach Cheryl Burnett’s foot crashing down onto the hardwood. It was the sound of junior Kelly Helvey – coming off a career-high 30 points against University of Maryland Eastern Shore – falling to her hands and knees after a mid-court collision with Washington guard Cameo Hicks.
As Helvey limped into the locker room under her own strength, the four remaining Wolverines gathered in the middle of the court and tried to regroup. Michigan managed to go on a small scoring run before completely handing the game over to the Huskies and losing 82-60.
“When Kelly went down, it was a major blow to our team,” sophomore Ta’Shia Walker said. “We knew we had to recoup. It was rough because she is a very big part of our team. We had to regroup, and we had to be able to play through everything.”
Despite their efforts, the Wolverines (4-5) immediately fell back into their old habits, turning the ball over 24 times while struggling against the Huskies’ ever-changing defense. Washington has been looking forward to this matchup ever since it fell to the Wolverines in Ann Arbor last year. And it showed. The Huskies opened the game in a 1-3-1 zone in order to neutralize the Wolverines’ 3-point shooting and force them to turn inside for offensive productivity.
“It’s kind of been circled on our calendar,” Washington coach June Daugherty said of the game. “I think our players really played hard, and it was great to see us out-rebound them and cause all of those turnovers.”
With the Wolverines’ offense out of sync, the Huskies (6-2) switched back and forth between a zone and man-to-man coverage, holding the Wolverines to just six treys. With the perimeter completely covered, the post players did whatever they could to score, but the ball just didn’t get to them often enough. Despite tying for a game-high 17 points, there were several possessions when Walker was open down low and never received the ball, which found its way into a Washington player’s hands first.
“A lot of our scoring problems are due to turnovers,” Walker said. “We can’t get the ball in a position to execute because turnovers are killing our offense.”
With Walker on the bench taking a breather, freshman Stephanie Skrba came in and managed to temporarily jumpstart the Wolverines offense late in the first half. On her first play, Skrba drained a 15-foot jumper from the left wing, only to hustle back and block Hicks’s baseline shot, grab the next defensive board and pass the ball out to sophomore captain Krista Clement.
The sophomore returned the rock right back to Skrba on the Wolverines’ next two possessions, and Skrba converted both passes on short-range jumpshots from the paint, bringing the Wolverines within five at the end of her six-point scoring run.
“It’s pretty amazing, especially for a freshman,” Clement said. “Just to come in and play with confidence and do things that come natural to her. She really just came in and played hard and wasn’t intimidated by things that were happening in the game at that time and that was big for us.”
But Skrba’s offensive spark was quickly counteracted by freshman Jessica Minnfield’s back-to-back turnovers. Minnfield went on to turn the ball over six times before Burnett pulled her. Michigan’s turnovers resulted in 22 Huskies’ points, and the team’s dismal 46 attempted shots were the main reason they were able to have a second-half field goal percentage at 55 percent – a season high.
“We were shooting 55 percent in the second half and that’s a really good stat,” Burnett said. “But what is deceiving about that is the fact that, on many possessions, we aren’t even getting a shot because we are turning it over. We cannot turn the ball over that many times and we certainly can’t have our point guards turning it over a combined 10 times.”
After the teams shook hands, the Wolverines again gathered in the middle of the court, trying to regroup and stay focused as best they could.
“I think a lot of it is just going to be coming together and finding almost a different chemistry than we had before,” Clement said. “Everyone will be focusing on things that each one of us needs to do differently to make our team better, and its going to take contributions from everyone to make it a successful outcome in the end.”
After the group broke up, Helvey stopped and glanced up at the scoreboard before she slowly hobbled back into the locker room. The team had hoped to break into a winning record out in Seattle, but it looks as if the team’s next goal will be climbing back to a .500 mark against Fordham tomorrow night.