Feb. 25, 2015 - The Concordia-Chicago women's basketball team faced a tall challenge this evening in the second round of the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference tournament. The opposition was the Wisconsin Lutheran Warriors, regular-season champion and top-seed in the tournament. The Cougars fought bravely through the entire 40 minutes but, in the end, the Warriors just had too many weapons, and CUC's season came to an end with a 83-61 loss.
Senior Kassy Koehler (Belvidere, IL/Rockford Lutheran) provided the early offense with a pair of threes from the left wing. Koehler's first triple gave CUC the early 3-0 lead, but the Warriors ran off nine straight points before Koehler connected again at the 14:11 mark. Maggie Gartner then instigated a 15-0 run for the hosts with eight consecutive points, half of them coming on putbacks. The Cougars fought back by scoring nine of the game's next 12 points. Morgan Jahnke (Fox Lake, IL/Grant Community), Shania Kiser (Fremont, OH/Fremont Ross) and Angelik Young (Crete, IL/Crete-Monee) all scored in the lane while Jaela DeJean (Houston, TX/Houston Christian) connected from the outside to make the score Warriors 27, Cougars 15. Over the next couple of minutes, the Cougars had a few opportunities to get the deficit down to 10 points but were unable to capitalize. Gartner eventually scored inside to push the lead back to 14, and the Warriors eventually built their lead to 20 points at 36-16. DeJean would hit another three down the stretch, but the home team finished the half with a three by Bethany Unkefer and exited the court with a 43-21 advantage.
The Warriors shot 14-34 (41 percent) to the Cougars' 8-33 (24 percent) and also claimed a big advantage at the foul line. Wisconsin Lutheran was awarded 14 attempts, making good at 10, while CUC had just one trip to the line, making one of two. Rebounds were a decisive 31-16 edge to WLC with Kristen Schulz collecting 15 and Gartner 10.
Facing a bigger mountain to climb than Saturday's 10-point halftime deficit, the Cougars began fighting back nonetheless. Koehler and Miranda Rogers (Cypress, TX/Houston Christian) hit from downtown, Young scored inside, and Jahnke followed with a three to put the score at 50-34. However, Schulz's three-point play turned the tide as WLC came back with eight straight to put the lead back up at 24. The Cougars got scores by Jahnke and Kiser to get the deficit back down to 20, but the Warriors pulled away from that point, and CUC never drew any closer than the final 22-point margin. Wisconsin Lutheran shot 16-26 (62 percent) in the second half to repel CUC's rallies. Included in that total was 5-9 three-point shooting. Concordia-Chciago shot 15-34 (44 percent) in the second half, 7-15 from three-point range. The Warriors won the boards by a 48-31 margin, but the Cougars won the turnover battles in committing just nine while forcing 13.
Jahnke led the Cougars with 16 points on 7-14 shooting (2-4 threes) and four assists. Koehler scored 12 points on 4-9 shooting from three-point range. in her final game in a CUC uniform.
The Cougars finished the season with a 16-11 record, their best since the 2007-08 season when they went 17-10. This year's record marked a 13-game improvement on last year's 2-23 team, one of the biggest turnarounds among all levels of the NCAA.
