PICTURED ABOVE: Chantal Meacham scored a game-high 19 points in Wheaton 59-53 victory at Roosevelt on Saturday afternoon.
Chicago, Ill. - The Thunder women's basketball, ranked ninth in this weeks' D3hoops.com Top-25 poll, ran its unbeaten streak to seven games to start the season as the Thunder defeated Roosevelt 59-53 in Chicago this afternoon. Wheaton improves to 7-0 with the victory while Roosevelt falls to 3-7. Wheaton will travel to UW-Whitewater to face the Warhawks on Wednesday night at 7 PM.
Both teams struggled from the field on Saturday afternoon. Wheaton shot a season-low 25.7% (19-74) from the field but made 31.6% (6-19) from three-point territory. Wheaton was 15-18 (83.3%) on free throw attempts. Roosevelt shot 32.8% (21-64) from the field but made just three of of 11 (27.3%) three-point attempts. The Lakers were 8-14 (57.1%) from the charity stripe. Wheaton won the rebound battle 62-43 with a decisive 27-13 edge in offensive rebounds.
In a game that saw several lengthy scoring droughts, Wheaton opened the game by holding the Lakers scoreless for the first 3:20 while building a 5-0 lead. Roosevelt returned the favor in the middle portion of the first half while holding Wheaton scoreless for a 4:40 streth while scoring eight straight points to take an 11-8 lead. Wheaton answered with nine straight points over a span of nearly five minutes to build a 19-15 lead with just under six minutes left in the half. Despite seeing a five-point lead vanish in the final minute and a half of the first half, a
Moriah Reeves jumper with 18 seconds left gave Wheaton a 27-25 halftime edge.
Roosevelt opened the second half but scoring eight straight points while holding Wheaton scoreless for a span of 4:02 and took its biggest lead of the night at 33-27. A
Katie McDaniels lay-up cut the lead down to 37-35 before both teams went nearly fou rminutes without scoring while the Thunder were held scoreless for just shy of five minutes. A three-pointer by
Kelly Lawson snapped that streak and a couple minutes later a three-pointer by Meacham gave Wheaton the lead at 44-41 with 8:07 to play. Roosevelt battled back with a 6-0 run to retake the lead at at 51-50 with 2:31 to play, but Wheaotn held the Lakers without a field goal for the remainder of the game while running off six straight points to clinch the 59-53 victory.
Chantal Meacham led all scorers with 19 points, including 5-10 shooting from the three-point line, and grabbed six rebounds.
Katie McDaniels scored 11 points and
Ellie Zeller scored six points with 10 rebounds despite playing only 16 minutes due to foul trouble.
Mel Bremhorst grabbed a game-high 11 rebounds. Paige Gallimore led the Lakers with 13 points.
Note Worthy: Wheaton's 7-0 start is the tied for the fourth-best start to a season and Wheaton's best since 1982-83...Wheaton also started 7-0 in the 1982-83 season as well as in 1966-67 and 1965-66.
