Katie Donovan scored 10 of her career-high 22 points in the first 4 minutes and 8 seconds of the second half as the Illinois State pulled away from Air Force 85-49 Wednesday, making coach Robin Pingeton a winner in her first game at ISU.
Donovans team led 39-19 at halftime by out-scoring the Falcons 19-5 in the final seven minutes. After the intermission, the Falcons Amoy Jackson hit two free throws before Donovan put back her own miss to start her flurry. She followed with a three-pointer from the left wing, a layup off a pretty pass from Taren OBrien capping a fast break, then another three-pointer in transition and the Birds led 57-28 with 15:52 to play.
Redbird coach Robin Pingeton was impressed with the way all 14 of her players performed.
This was a big game for us, said Pingeton. Defensively, we want to wear teams down. With our pressure defense, were not always looking for the steal, we just want to wear them down. Everyone played hard for whatever time they were in and nobody got their head down If we can continue to play team basketball like we did tonight, were going to have a great season.
Donovan got scoring help from Stacey White with 1615 on three-pointersand Jaci McCormack with 12 as the Redbirds won their first season opener in five years. Pingeton, the fourth Redbird head coach in program history, is the second to win her first game at ISU.
OBrien matched her career high with 8 assists as ISU collected 23 assists on 30 field goals.
She was proud of how hard her teammates played, including a defense which forced 25 USAF turnovers.
What impressed me is that whether you played one second or 30 minutes (for Illinois State) tonight, you played hard, said OBrien.
Jackson led the Falcons, 0-3, with 10 points and 6 rebounds. USAF coach Ardie McInelly thought Illinois State out-played her team all game long, and that ISUs array of perimeter shootersfive made at least one trey--caused her team problems.
They played harder than we did, said McInelly, whose best player, Shawna Neff, was injured in the shootaround and wasnt at full speed. We knew wed have to get a hand up on Katie Donovan and Stacey White and Jaci McCormack and we didnt get that done. They (Illinois State) have some good shooters and they are difficult to defend because of it.
ISU had a 48-42 rebounding edge with Erin Keeney collecting a game-high 7.
With 23 assists on 30 Probably one of the proudest moments was when all five of my starters were on the bench shouting defense, defense for their teammates on the court, said Pingeton. We shot a lot of threes, but, at halftime, I told them those shots are going to fall for us. We played really good team ball tonight.
The Birds, 1-0, set team records with 13 three-point field goals made and 41 three-pointers attempted. The previous ISU highs were 11 made and 30 attempted. Illinois State made 4 of 19 first-half threes, but drained 8 of their first 15 after halftime to put the game away.
Illinois States point total was the highest in a game since a 95-93 overtime win at Bradley Dec. 28, 1998. The 36-point margin of victory was the largest for the Redbirds since an 86-45 win over Central Michigan Dec. 18, 1994.
The Redbirds meet Western Michigan at 2:05 p.m. Sunday in Redbird Arena.
