Emily Zimmerman (at left) works against Baldwin-Wallace's Jessica Carpenter during the Lady Quakers' 59-58 loss to the Yellow Jackets. (John Swartzel photo)
Wilmington College battled Ohio Athletic Conference-leading Baldwin-Wallace from buzzer to buzzer before falling to the Yellow Jackets, 59-58, at Fred Raizk Arena Saturday afternoon.
The loss drops the Lady Quakers to 4-6 in the OAC, 8-9 overall. Baldwin-Wallace improves to 9-1 in the conference, 13-4 for the season.
“I’m disappointed that we lost the game, but that’s the only thing I’m disappointed with,” Wilmington head coach Jerry Scheve said. “They are a quality team and we are a quality team. Our kids are working really hard. We gave it a full effort today, but we just couldn’t get it done.”
Wilmington senior All-American Kortney Kin (Upper Sandusky/Riverdale), who scored 29 against BW when the teams met in November, torched the Jackets for season-high 33 points Saturday.
“Kortney played well. They’ve got some kids guarding her that are very good, but she scored more than half the times she touched it in there. I thought our problem was that we didn’t rely on Kortney to shoot too much; we relied on her to make too many shots. We stood and watched while she shot and didn’t rebound any of her misses.”
The game was close from the opening tip. Wilmington enjoyed a 10-6 lead when Allie Meranda (Georgetown) scored at 15:39, but could not pull away.
Baldwin-Wallace rallied to take a 26-25 lead at the break.
Wilmington opened the second half with a basket from Kin and a triple by Meranda to take a 30-26 advantage, but BW scored six straight to regain the lead.
Baldwin-Wallace took control of the game down the stretch with a 10-1 spurt. At 1:24 the Jackets led 54-46.
Marianne McGoron (Hamilton/Fenwick) pumped life into the Lady Quakers. The senior hit a pair of free throws and a shot on the move, and then found Kin for a 3-pointer to pull WC within 56-53 with 37 seconds to play.
“Marianne has been improving week to week since she’s come back from her injury,” Scheve said. “I thought she played with a lot of confidence today. She’s playing well.”
Baldwin-Wallace hit 3 of 4 free throws to hang on for the win as Kin scored on a stick-back at the buzzer for the final count.
McGoron scored season-high 14 points and dished out team-high three assists while Meranda added seven. Olivia Waters pulled down 10 rebounds.
“We’re playing teams close, but the next step is to beat them. That has proven difficult for us,” Scheve said. “We’re just going to keep searching for the answer, because I think it’s more of a mental thing. We’ve got to believe we can do it, and the only way we’re going to believe we can do is to do it.”
Wilmington will travel to New Concord to face Muskingum at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday.
