ADA — The Ohio Northern women's basketball team defeated Ohio Athletic Conference foe Marietta 80-36 thanks to a dominant defensive effort at the ONU Sports Center on Saturday afternoon.
The 44-point margin of victory is the program's best since a 77-30 win over Rochester (Mich.) to open the 2007-08 season.
Senior Kara Dysert earned her second double-double of the season to help the Polar Bears improve to 9-1 overall and 4-0 in the OAC, while Marietta falls to 7-3 overall and 3-2 in league play.
Dysert scored 18 points on 5-of-8 shooting and a perfect 8-of-8 from the charity stripe, also pulling down 12 rebounds, for her 12th career double-double.
Junior Morgan Dumbaugh scored a game-high 20 points to aid Northern's winning effort.
ONU won the battle in the trenches, outscoring Marietta 40-8 in the paint and out-rebounding the Pioneers 46-31.
The Polar Bears also scored 30 points off 27 Pioneer turnovers, while Marietta was only able to score five points off ONU's 14 turnovers.
Marietta never led in the game, as ONU jumped out to leads of 12-0 and 26-4 in the first half.
The Pioneers were unable to cut the deficit to less than 20 points, as the Polar Bears led 41-15 going into the break.
After Marietta cut the lead to 41-19, a quick 6-0 ONU spurt made the score 47-19 and took away Marietta's early-half momentum.
Leading 66-33 with 5:52 left to play, ONU ended the game on a 12-3 run to seal the victory.
"Today was a great all-around team effort," said head coach Michele Durand. "Our defense played great and this was a big win against a good Marietta team."
The Polar Bears didn't allow any Marietta player to score in double figures, as Aleisha Guiler's eight points were the team's best.
For ONU, sophomore Cenzie Yoder added eight points, four rebounds, four assists and four steals, while junior Katie Mengos tallied seven points, five rebounds and five steals.
Additionally, junior Joanna Snyder recorded eight points and seven rebounds, and sophomore Pendah Jallow scored a career-high eight points in seven minutes of action.
ONU went 28-of-62 (45.2 percent) from the field and 5-of-10 (50.0 percent) from three-point range, compared to 12-of-48 (25.0 percent) from the field and 2-of-12 (16.7 percent) from long distance for Marietta.
The Polar Bears will look to add on to their current seven-game winning streak when they travel to Capital for a conference game on Wednesday at 3 p.m.