Purdue Women’s Basketball: Michigan 66, Purdue 63

The Boilermakers suffered another tough loss in Ann Arbor tonight dropping a heartbreaker against Michigan by a score of 63-66.

Each team started fairly slow and worked to get in a rhythm throughout the first quarter with Purdue getting out to a 13-9 in the middle of the first. Michigan then began enforcing their will on the Boilermakers by going on a 24-6 run by hitting shot after shot after shot from deep. The Boilers made a run thanks to Lindsey Whilby scoring 11 points in the first half and cut the Wolverine lead to 8 heading into halftime.

After trading baskets for most of the third quarter, the Boilermakers started working their way back into the game once again with Karissa McLaughlin starting to get going and playing relentlessly on defense while Michigan started to sputter. The duo of Diagne and Harris for Purdue led a furious to come within two points of the lead at 61-63. Naz Hillmon and the Wolverines had an answer though, which was a consistent theme in the contest

Purdue got some great performances from a couple of unlikely candidates as Fatou Diagne and Lindsey Wilbey both had awesome games. Diagne scored a career high 11 points on 5-7 shooting from the floor, grabbed 6 rebounds and played very good defense in the second half. Whilby scored all 11 of her points in the first half and kept the Boilers in the game at that time.

Two of the Boilermaker Big 3 struggled after being on fire in their last three games. Dominique Oden had just 7 points on 2-10 shooting but she did contribute in other ways by having 5 rebounds and dishing out 4 assists coming after an outstanding 24 point performance on Monday against Indiana. McLaughlin also had a tough game shooting just 3-10 from the floor, scoring 10 points.

Ae’Rianna Harris continued her strong play again tonight putting up 14 points and swatting 4 shots, which placed her 4th all-time in Big Ten women’s history for career blocked shots.

Also of note, freshmen forward Rickie Woltman missed her second straight game with what appears to be a leg injury, but nothing has been confirmed at the moment.

After falling in back to back games, Sharon Versyp’s team falls to 15-9 overall and back to .500 in the conference at 6-6. Sunday’s home game against an excellent Iowa team becomes more and more pivotal as the days pass, as the Boilermakers are in desperate need of a Quad 1 win down the stretch. Iowa is 18-4 overall and have gone 9-2 in the Big Ten thus far and take on Nebraska at home tonight before heading to West Lafayette this weekend. The game will be in Mackey Arena on Sunday at 2:00pm.