The RedHawks (24-5, 15-1 MAC) can clinch at least a share of the conference crown Wednesday night at home against Kent State.<\/p>\n
N\u00faria Jurjo scored 15 points to lead Miami, while Amber Scalia and Macie Taylor each added 13 and Tamar Singer finished with 12. Liz Murphy had 15 points for Akron (7-22, 4-12).<\/p>\n
Miami shot 52.7% from the field, forced 21 turnovers and committed a season-low 10.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery win is difficult,\u201d Miami coach Glenn Box said. \u201cWe typically get other people\u2019s best punch. Akron made some shots throughout to kind of keep them hanging in, and our kids did a good job.<\/p>\n
\u201cBottom line, we won \u2014 and winning is hard. Especially when people think you\u2019re good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Singer\u2019s three-point play gave Miami an early 5-4 edge, and Ilse de Vries later found Taylor for a wide-open 3-pointer to make it 8-7. Four consecutive layups from Mio Sakano, Amber Tretter, Taylor and Singer helped spark a 16-7 run late in the first quarter, though Akron closed within 16-12.<\/p>\n
The RedHawks seized control in the second.<\/p>\n
Leading 18-15 early in the quarter, Miami erupted on a 13-0 run fueled by back-to-back 3-pointers from Singer and Jurjo and a pair of layups from Taylor. Jurjo\u2019s second triple of the period stretched the advantage to 31-15, and Miami carried a 37-21 lead into halftime.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s interesting about it is I control a lot of who scores,\u201d Box said of Miami\u2019s balanced attack. \u201cThere\u2019s a million ways to win. You get to choose how you want to win. We\u2019ve found what works for this team, and we\u2019re good with that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Akron trimmed the deficit to 39-28 three minutes into the third quarter, but Tretter and Scalia answered with back-to-back layups to restore order. De Vries and Jurjo combined for three baskets in a 60-second span later in the period, and Sakano drilled a 3-pointer with two minutes left in the third to push the lead to 19.<\/p>\n
Scalia\u2019s corner 3-pointer and Tretter\u2019s layup made it 63-39 with 7:29 remaining. Miami extended the margin to 70-45 at the final media timeout and cruised from there. Akron got no closer than 18 points in the final five minutes.<\/p>\n
Scalia\u2019s fast-break layup early in the third quarter marked the 1,500th point of her career. She is now one 3-pointer shy of 200.<\/p>\n
\u201c1,500 is a lot of points,\u201d Box said. \u201cShe\u2019s a really good player, but she brings so much to the program. \u2026 She\u2019s an unbelievable weapon. It\u2019s fun to coach her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scalia finished with 13 points despite combining with Tretter for just four points at halftime.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve always known this whole year that we have depth,\u201d Scalia said. \u201cMe and Tretter came in at halftime and kind of looked at each other and were like, \u2018We\u2019re good. We\u2019re going to figure it out.\u2019 <\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest thing for us is we\u2019ve got to play defense. Stops always lead to offense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miami improved to 13-0 at home this season and matched the 1981-82 team for the most wins in a single season with 24.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s just a feel-good from playing at home,\u201d Box said. \u201cBut at the bottom line, you\u2019ve got to win no matter where you play. We\u2019re just trying to play good basketball right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The RedHawks will try to do just that Wednesday when they host Kent State at 7 p.m., with a conference championship on the line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The RedHawks (24-5, 15-1 MAC) can clinch at least a share of the conference crown Wednesday night at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,482,85],"class_list":["post-512139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-general-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}