Box Score Photo Gallery | Williams Interview

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – After opening the season 2-0 on their home court the Panthers dropped their second game of the season and first at home to NCAA DII Northern Michigan 56-50. Julie Janish led the scoring attack for Davenport shooting 4-8 from the field and hitting 3 for 5 from the free throw line. The Panthers will open conference action on Wednesday against UM-Dearborn with their first three WHAC games being played on the road.

To start the game Northern jumped out to a 12-4 lead but DU quickly picked away with three straight lay-ups from Kia Frazier, Alison Bouman and Abbey Hengesbach to cut it to just two. Northern built the lead back up to seven in the final minutes of the half but Davenport would not go away tailing four points to trail by just three at half.

In the second twenty minutes of play DU quickly took just their second lead of the game and built it up to a game high six at the 15:49 mark. After a Northern Michigan timeout Davenport was only able to produce five points in the next nine minutes and saw their lead diminish to a deficit of six with 5:57 left to play.

After injuring her ankle for the second time in three games Karli Harris re-entered the game at the 5:29 mark and scored nine straight points to bring the Panthers within two in the final minute and a half. Davenport did not record a bucket after the 1:47 mark and suffered their first home loss in 33 games.

DU forced 32 turnovers in the game but was out rebounded 29-40 and only hit 3-23 from behind the three point line. Janish led all scorers with eleven and Harris and Carrie Grubius each had nine points respectively.

The Panthers are now 5-2 overall and will return to action on Wednesday to open up WHAC play against UM-Dearborn for a 5:30pm tip-off. The women's game will be the first of a doubleheader with the DU men tipping of at 7:30pm. Tune in to “The Dan” for live radio coverage of Wednesday's action.

Post-Game Quotes – Head Coach Mike Williams

On Playing a bigger team in Northern Michigan: "It is different but its not something that should stop you from playing good basketball...On the glass, to get 13 offensive rebounds with them missing so many shots, we can live with that with the size differential and we did not give them many things offensively inside but it rattled us offensively a little bit."

On spark of Karli Harris late in the game: "She is a competitor and in the beginning she might have been pressing a little bit and she came out and I told her to play the way she is capable of playing.  She overcame not only one bad ankle but two and played very well down the stretch."


Post-Game Notes

Lowest points scored at the Student Center since 12/11/2009 against Indiana Wesleyan (57)…The loss snaps a 33 game home win streak and is the first non-conference loss for either the men's or women's program at the DU Student Center…DU is now 1-6 against NCAA DII schools


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