No. 10-ranked Women's Basketball wins 16th straight with 59-43 victory over Mount Union
By Caleb Scott
ADA — The No. 10-ranked Ohio Northern women's basketball team posted its 16th straight victory on Saturday afternoon after defeating visiting Mount Union 59-43 at the ONU Sports Center in an Ohio Athletic Conference matchup.
The Polar Bears improve to 16-1 overall and remain perfect at 10-0 in the OAC, while the Purple Raiders drop to 8-9, 5-5.
Senior Amy Bullimore (Morrow/Little Miami) led the way offensively for Northern as she tallied a team-best 14 points and grabbed a game-high seven rebounds.
Junior Tori Wyss (Ada) also grabbed seven rebounds for the Polar Bears, while junior Alyssa Manley (Lima/Bath) scored a career-high 13 points.
Bullimore was honored prior to the contest for becoming Ohio Northern's all-time leading points scorer on Wednesday evening at Heidelberg. With seven rebounds this afternoon, Bullimore moved into second place all-time at ONU with 783 rebounds and needs just 18 more rebounds to break the all-time career rebounding record at ONU.
After Mount Union took an early 6-2 lead, Northern would respond with a 14-0 run from the 6:16 mark of the first quarter until the 8:41 mark of the second quarter, capped off by a 3-pointer from junior Jenna Dirksen (Beavercreek/Carroll) to take a commanding 16-6 lead.
The Polar Bears would hold a 26-18 advantage heading into the intermission.
Northern opened the third quarter scoring seven unanswered points as a 3-pointer from senior Lindsey Black (Urbana/Graham) pushed the lead to 33-18 with 6:26 left in the third quarter.
A free throw from sophomore Abby Weeks (West Chester/Mount Notre Dame) with 34 seconds left in the third quarter gave ONU its biggest lead of the evening at 46-21.
After pulling ahead 51-27 early in the fourth quarter, the Polar Bears saw their lead shrink to 51-36 as MtU used a 9-0 run to close the gap with 6:14 left in the contest.
The Purple Raiders were not able to get any closer than 14 points as ONU went on to claim the victory, 59-43.
Northern shot 22-of-58 (37.9 percent) from the field, including 9-of-22 (40.9 percent) from the 3-point line, while the Purple Raiders were 18-of-53 (34.0 percent) from the field, and 5-of-23 (21.7 percent) from 3-point range.
The Polar Bears won the battle on the glass by a 38-33 margin.
ONU returns to action on Wednesday evening at 7:30 pm as it welcomes Wilmington to the ONU Sports Center for the second of this season's 2-game series.
