After losing a close game to Kent State, Ohio (8-8) will play Bowling Green (12-3), one of the teams to beat in the Mid-American Conference, Thursday night.
Despite losing a game to the Golden Flashes, a team with only two wins, head coach Semeka Randall will not drastically change her game plan.
“The biggest thing is we have to concentrate and focus on ourselves and on the things that we do really well,” she said. “We’ve been pretty decent at defending people and taking people out of their key sets.”
The next player who Ohio will try to contain is Bowling Green forward Alexis Rogers. The redshirt sophomore, who transferred from Duke, is averaging 21 points a game early in the conference schedule.
The Bobcats are going to approach defending Rogers similarly to how they attempted to defend Buffalo’s Brittany Hedderson: namely, forcing her to take contested shots.
“Bowling Green is a very good team. You are not going to completely take away what they do,” Randall said. “They run a lot of sets, but in terms of their key sets, we are going to try to take them away.”
In order to accomplish that, Randall said on-ball screens and communication will be key.
Redshirt senior guard Tenishia Benson agreed, adding that the team should focus on its game plan of defending Rogers, who is fourth in the MAC in scoring.
“(We have to) play our game and stick with the game plan,” Benson said. We didn’t make any huge adjustments to guard (Rogers). The players we have here are more than capable of guarding her one-on-one.”
The Bobcats, who shot 43.6 percent against Kent Saturday, will continue to put emphasis on shooting the ball.
“We definitely need to shoot well. Of course, when you are on a different court than your own, it can be hard sometimes to get a feel for the rim (because of) how the balls are,” she said. “If we can continue to shoot the ball well and clean up some things on defense, the outcome of the game will be different.”
Ohio’s past three games against Bowling Green have not been close, with two of the three resulting in double-digit losses for Ohio.
Junior forward Porsha Harris, who injured her knee in the game against Buffalo, saw a doctor Wednesday to determine when she will be able to play in her next game.
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