2008 Woodie Awards
Women's Basketball Crushes Edgewood, advances to NCAA's
Corey Kempf
Issue date: 3/4/04 Section: Sports
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When the Lake Michigan Conference received an automatic bid in 1999, Lakeland College must have claimed it like an explorer laying stake to new land. With their 69-43 polishing of Edgewood on Saturday, the women claimed the bid for the fourth time in six years.
The Muskie defense was strong, holding the Eagles to an anemic 24.6 percent shooting for the game, out-rebounding Edgewood 45-28, and forcing 19 turnovers.
On offense, the Lady Muskies shot 46.3 percent from the field. Renee Steinert scored a team-high 19 points, while Kristi Thill came off the bench to sink 11 points. Casey Thousand, the team's only senior, scored seven and tallied six steals.
The game was never that close as the Muskies jumped ahead for a 15 point leading heading to the locker room at the half, and simply never looked back, extending their winning streak to 13 games.
Since they finished first in the regular season, the women received the bye in the first round of the tournament, giving them a relatively easy road to the championship by only having to win two games.
A week earlier in their first game of the tournament, the Muskies stomped number four seeded Concordia by a score of 75-53. Freshman Aubri Rote led the scoring for Muskies with 22 points. Steinert and Thousand also scored in double-digits for Lakeland with 14 and 10 points, respectively.
The defense again stifled the Falcons, holding leading scorer Stacy Rusch to only four points the whole game. Three Falcon starters fouled out in the game as well, limiting their scoring to only one player, JQ Stewart, who finished with a game-high 23 points.
In the game, the Muskies shot 53 percent from the field, including 60 percent from behind the arc, while holding Concordia to just 37 percent from the floor.
With the two wins, the Muskies gave Head Coach April Arvan her 212th win of her 10-year coaching career. She only has 54 losses in those 10 seasons, for a 79.6 winning percentage. She is also 109-17 in conference.