The Carthage women's basketball team (11-7, 4-3 College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin) lost its third-straight game on Saturday, Jan. 24 with a 58-53 loss to CCIW-opponent and No. 16 Wheaton College (Ill., 16-2, 6-1 CCIW) at King Arena in Wheaton, Ill. With the loss, the Lady Reds fell into a third-place tie with Millikin University (13-5, 4-3). Wheaton remains in a first-place tie with North Central College (17-1, 6-1).
Carthage jumped out to an 11-0 lead in the first four minutes, behind a pair of three-pointers by Kasey Kleiner. Wheaton finished the half with a 19-11 run to close the gap to three points at halftime, 22-19. The Thunder took their first lead of the game, 33-32, at 14:04 second half on a layup by Katie McDaniels. Another McDaniels layup and a three-pointer by Mel Bremhorst gave Wheaton a six-point lead, 38-32, at 12:16. The Lady Reds got it back to a point, 47-46, at 6:26, but the Thunder went back up by five, 51-46, at 5:21. Carthage cut the lead to two points, 52-50, on a layup by Erin Thomas at 4:16, but back-to-back layups by Hannah Considine put Wheaton up by six, 56-50, at 1:35. A long three-pointer by Taylor Boardman at 1:18 made it a three-point game, 56-53, but another layup by Considine with 50 seconds to play closed out the scoring at 58-53.
The Thunder shot 40 percent (23-57), including just three-of-13 three-pointers, while Carthage shot 42 percent (19-45), including seven-of-13 from three-point range. Wheaton got to free-throw line 17 times and made nine, while the Lady Reds connected on eight-of-11. Wheaton had a narrow, 33-31 rebounding advantage, with Carthage turning the ball over 16 times to seven for the Thunder.
Hannah Considine led Wheaton with 17 points on seven-of-12 field goals, along with three-of-five free throws and four rebounds. Mel Bremhorst came off the bench to add 11 points on five-of-six shooting. Katie McDaniels, while limited to two points, dished out nine assists. Carthage's Alexis Hahn (Jr., Itasca, Ill./Roselle-Lake Park) scored 14 points on seven-of-18 field goals, along with six rebounds and four assists, while Taylor Boardman (Jr., Frankfort, Ill./Lincoln-Way North) had 13 points on nine-of-10 shooting, along with four boards.
"I can't quarrel with our fight in this game," said Carthage coach Tim Bernero. "After two bad losses in a row, we were lively and aggressive in tonight. We got off to a good start, which we haven't done for the past two or three weeks, but we couldn't get enough baskets at the right time, and they did. I thought it would be a game like this, since the Carthage-Wheaton games are usually close, and these two teams are quite similar in style-of-play. It was encouraging how we played, but the result hurts. Wheaton got a couple of key layups late on back-door plays where we didn't get another defensive player to help out. Alexis Hahn played a good game for us, but I thought she was getting beat up. If we get this kind of effort in the second half, we'll get in the conference tournament and see where we go. The loss that hurt was last Saturday against Millikin, because we had a chance to go 5-0 with four of those at home. Losing that one before this three-game road set us back."
Carthage travels to Chicago on Wednesday, Jan. 28 to play conference-opponent North Park University (10-8, 2-5 CCIW) in a 7 p.m. game at the North Park Gymnasium.