Game Notes: Milwaukee School of Engineering @ North Central College(12/12/12)

Final Score
NCC 102, MSOE 49

Game Summary
The outcome of this one was never really in doubt as the Cardinals (5-3) struck first and never trailed as the lead slowly ballooned. The Raiders (0-8) dressed only 7 players and just couldn't keep up with the fast pace the Cardinals were dictating. It was a 66-28 lead at the half as Coach Roof called off the dogs late in the first half. The second half had a much less frantic pace but the Cardinals maintained that lead. It seemed for a while that they'd threaten the program scoring record but were barely able to break 100, topping it with less than a minute to go.

Key Stats

Emily Murphy scoring 2 of her 16 points in the first half.

• NCC: 30 offensive rebounds: Usually that total will lead to you winning games, and it did so big time tonight. The Cardinals won the overall rebounding battle 52-32, and if they can keep that up, this team will go pretty far.
• Emily Murphy (NCC): 8-15 FG, 16 pts, 9 reb (7ofr), 1 ast, 2 stl: No one on this Cardinal team is averaging more than 20 minutes a game, which is nice, so to see Emily doing this much damage is a good thing. She missed a few layups late in the game, but overall played very well once again.
• Megan Kroll (MSOE): 5-13 FG (0-1 3pt), 12-16 FT, 22 pts, 4 reb, 3 ast, 1 stl: Kroll played all 40 minutes and gave this game her all. She also got plenty of free throw practice with constant attacks of the basket. She showed why she's the team's leading scorer so far.

North Central System Watch
This feature will keep track of how the new system Coach Roof installed this season is taking effect based on 3 main figures. One of these is totally arbitrary, but interesting to note, while the other 2 are key stats that I'm ignoring above since they're featured here.

• Line Changes: 31.  The Cardinals subbed out 18 times before halftime and another 13 in the 2nd half. This is just a fun thing the official scorer and I like to keep track of on the side.
• NCC 3pt: 16-44 (36.4%). Coming into tonight this team was averaging 50 three's a game, so the average was brought back down to where Coach Roof wants it. If this team is hitting between 15 and 20 of those per game, they should be okay in most games assuming the rest of their shooting keeps up.
• MSOE Turnovers: 31. The Cardinals stopped their press before halftime and settled into a 2-3 zone, forcing 20 turnovers before the intermission. Of those 31 turnovers, an astounding 23 were off steals, which is great. It got the Cardinals running and set up some quick, easy buckets.

Final Thoughts
The one thing that really concerned me tonight was layups and free throws. The Cardinals did miss a bunch of easy layups, especially in the second half, which you can't get away with in CCIW play. More alarming to me though was the 4-11 they shot from the stripe. Those are free points you can't give away. Other than that, it was an excellent night for this team that saw joy from the bench when Amanda Hoye hit the three to break the century mark. In talking to some of the North Central staff during halftime, we don't have the official single game scoring record (an unofficial total I heard was 108), but the highest mark I can find is a game from the 1983 national championship team which dropped 103 on Millikin. Maybe Saturday against Dominican we can see another shot at it.