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Makaylee Kuhn scores 30-plus points each game as Northern Michigan University women’s basketball team sweeps Purdue Northwest

Makaylee Kuhn

MARQUETTE — It’s rare that the second game of a basketball series pretty much repeats what happened in the first game.

But that’s what the Northern Michigan University women’s basketball team went through — in a fortunate way over the weekend.

The Wildcats won Friday over Purdue Northwest thanks to a fourth-quarter surge, and NMU did it again Saturday, sweeping the Pride with a 65-55 win.

Those two wins helped lock in a home playoff game for the ‘Cats (10-8) at 6 p.m. Tuesday against Davenport (5-13).

Northern finished as the seventh seed in the 12-team league while Davenport was 10th. This year’s GLIAC Tournament format has the top four teams receiving a first-round bye with Nos. 5 through 8 hosting Nos. 9 through 12 on Tuesday.

“It was a very similar game to be honest with you,” Northern head coach Troy Mattson said in Saturday’s postgame Zoom interview. “We had a good first quarter on defense and I thought we had a pretty good fourth quarter and a decent one in the third quarter, but our second quarter, we gave up like 21 or 22 points in the second quarter.

“Part of that is on the coaching. We took a chance on a couple kids and they made some shots and then we weren’t playing hard enough. We need to compete every single second that we’re out on the court and we’re not going to be able to go very far in this tournament if we don’t defend. We’re still trying to learn how to and we’re still trying to get strong enough to, but we’re not going to be able to lift enough weights to get us 10 or 15 pounds of muscle in the next week. So we’ve got to toughen up a little bit more mentally.”

Just like the day before, NMU got a huge game from Makaylee Kuhn, who finished with 39 points and seven rebounds Satuday after she had 34 and nine in those categories Friday.

Mattson praised Kuhn for finding openings and taking advantage of what the Pride was putting up against her defensively.

“We need to play to the way we’re being played against and I’ve been begging her all season to pass the ball because she’s going to see a lot of double teams, a lot of triple teams and she needs to get the ball out of her hands and make her teammates better,” he said.

“It just happened to be this weekend, they did not double team her, they did not triple team her. So we took advantage of that and said ‘Go get ’em. Go get ’em Makaylee.’ She was productive…. You can’t say she wasn’t productive all weekend. She really hurt ’em in the post. She hurt ’em off the dribble with the high ball screen.

“It’s not exactly how we wanted to play. We don’t want to play that way all the time, but you have to play to what the defense is giving you and if they were willing to give us that, then we need to take advantage of it.”

The first quarter was a back-and-forth affair with a Kuhn layup with 43 seconds left putting the Wildcats up 15-11 going into the second. PNW answered back, though, eventually taking the lead at 20-19 on a trey from Savaya Brockington. Down the stretch of the first half, Vivianne Jende made a layup for the Wildcats and Kayla Tierney drilled a 3-pointer with five seconds remaining to give Northern a 32-31 lead at the break.

In the third quarter, the teams continued to trade baskets with the Pride going up 44-43 on a Ce’niyah Hampton jumper, but Jende answered with a layup to make it 45-44 to start the fourth.

Like Friday, the Wildcats caught fire in the fourth. Kuhn dropped in a layup with 5:56 left to get NMU’s lead to nine at 55-46, but PNW cut its deficit to three on a Simmons layup with 4:26 remaining. Northern stood tough though as Kuhn made some free throws down the stretch to nail down the win.

Ryan Stieg can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 252. His email address is rstieg@miningjournal.net.

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