ENMU women bounce back against Midwestern

PORTALES — A week certainly made a night-and-day difference for Eastern New Mexico women's basketball team, which returned home on Thursday night and poured it on Midwestern State 81-66 at Greyhound Arena.

The Greyhounds (15-9, 11-6 Lone Star Conference) controlled most of the game, en route to a 54.3 percent shooting night from the floor. Back on Jan. 23 at Midwestern (12-11, 9-8), ENMU lost, 73-57, making Thursday's game an especially welcome sight.

"I think the biggest thing is we were a little more aggressive offensively. We knew (we needed to be) and I told them when we showed them film, 'They're gonna get up on us defensively," Greyhounds head coach Josh Prock said.

"They're a very aggressive defensive team, and with that, you have to be a very aggressive offensive team. You gotta get to the hole, and we had several guards — Sarina Johnson did a great job, Mikaehla Connor did a great job and our posts did a great job down low. All the way around, just a great job of being aggressive today."

Eastern took a 35-24 lead into intermission, but got off to a very sluggish start in the third quarter. Whitney Taylor's three-ball cut the deficit to five, before a Kristin Rydell lay-in trimmed the ENMU lead to 40-38.

Eastern responded with an Alivia Lewis jumper to extend the lead back to 10, with just more than a minute to play in the third.

MSU tried to make one last push with a Micheline Mercelita basket to tie the game at 57-all as 7:13 remained in regulation, but the Hounds responded by outscoring the Mustangs 24-9 the rest of the way.

ENMU's offensive output also included 6-of-12 (50 percent) from downtown and 25-of-33 (75.8 percent) from the charity stripe.

Last week proved to be a challenging road trip for the Greyhounds, following a loss to previously 0-22 Western New Mexico, before narrowly defeating a struggling Texas Woman's team last Thursday.

However, coming home and getting seven days' rest certainly has its perks, as Thursday proved. "We had four games in eight days, and we won three of those. I know it gets kinda soured a little bit with the Western loss, but at the same time, it takes a really tough team to lose a game like that and bounce back and beat a really good team," Prock said.

"I'm proud of these ladies, we're playing really well and we gotta keep it up."

Eastern will host Cameron on Saturday at 2 p.m. for Senior Day, in what will be the Hounds' final home game of the 2017-18 regular season.