An off day on the offensive end outweighed a solid rebounding effort for the Youngstown State women's basketball team as the Penguins fell 72-53 to UIC on Saturday at the Beeghly Center.
The Penguins shot 25.4 percent, but they were able to hang with the Flames for 34 minutes because of their hustling. YSU outrebounded the Flames 42-35, and 22 of those 42 boards were on the offensive end.
Sophomore Kenya Middlebrooks scored a career-high 18 points to lead all scorers, and Macey Nortey added 12. Middlebrooks scored 11 of her points from the charity stripe.
YSU's top two scorers, Brandi Brown and Bojana Dimitrov, combined to go 3-for-29 in the contest. Brown, however, grabbed 14 rebounds and broke YSU's freshman record for rebounding. She now has 244 rebounds this season, which surpassed Jen Perugini's record of 239 that was set 2001-02.
Shameia Green scored 17 points on 7-for-12 shooting for UIC, and Jessie Miller added 13. UIC shot 50.9 percent and outscored the Penguins 50-8 in the paint.
YSU used its 22 offensive rebounds to score 22 second-chance points.
The Penguins led for most of the final eight minutes of the first half, but UIC scored the final six points to go into the locker room ahead 25-24.
UIC scored the game's first six points and led 10-3 on a Cassie Johnson layup with 15 minutes remaining. Dimitrov hit a triple to cut the score to two, and Kaitlyn March's 3-pointer at the 8:35 mark put the Guins up for the first time at 15-14. That was part of a 16-4 run that gave the Penguins their largest lead at 24-18 when Middlebrooks hit two free throws with 4:20 left.
UIC, though, did not allow another point in the half and went ahead 25-24 on a Green jumper with nine seconds left.
YSU never lead in the second half, but the Flames did not go up by double digits until Green hit two free throws with 5:18 remaining. UIC ended up going on an 11-0 run to go up 62-42 with 3:45 left.
YSU goes back on the road to play at Butler on Thursday at 7 p.m.
COURTESY: YSU SPORTS INFORMATION
