Photo by Luke Zayas/True To The Cru
BELTON — For the second straight game, Katie Novak-Lenoir watched her squad put together two quarters of solid basketball, outscoring Emory in both the opening and closing 10 minutes on Sunday afternoon.
But 20 minutes of quality performance wasn’t going to cut it in a 40-minute game against a red-hot Emory team that returned four primary rotational players from its 2024-25 roster and had beaten Trinity (TX) handily, 85-58, just 18 hours before. Especially not when the second and third quarters turned out to be as one-sided as they were.
The Eagles soared to a commanding 38-24 halftime lead behind a 25-6 second-quarter run, and came out of the intermission with the same level of intensity. The effort was always there from The Cru. But the same couldn’t be said for scoring runs and defensive stops, and after outscoring UMHB, 46-17, in the middle quarters, Emory cruised to an 80-59 win.
“I feel like we’re freezing too much,” Novak-Lenoir, in her third season as UMHB’s head coach, said afterwards. “We’re trying to figure that out. I see us diving on the floor and crashing for boards, but then we’re making a bonehead play when we don’t need to, or not having communication on defense and we give up easy transition points.
“It’s just more mental lapses. We’ve got to figure something out—us as coaches and us as a team—because there’s only so many timeouts I’m going to have. We have to figure out a new way to change it within the game.”
The loss handed UMHB—the nation’s 25th-ranked team in the D3hoops.com Preseason Poll—an 0-2 start after falling narrowly to Whitman, 57-53, in Friday’s season opener. In both contests, finding consistency on both ends of the floor over longer stretches proved difficult, the Achilles heel in an opening weekend against two NCAA Tournament-caliber teams at home.
“I know wins and losses affect NPI, but I’m more concerned right now about whether we are actually getting better, changing and focusing on the things we’re trying to get better at every single day,” Novak-Lenoir said. “That’s what I’m looking to push this team towards: getting a more consistent identity and consistent effort in game flow. We just don’t have it yet.
“It’s a learning opportunity every day. If it’s making us better for conference play, then we’re just taking a couple hard punches right now.”
Early on, UMHB found itself on track for a bounce-back, notably flipping the script in the opening minutes after a sluggish start on Friday. In the opener, it was Whitman who landed the first punch in the form of a game-opening 6-0 run. But on Sunday, UMHB’s first possession saw Karlee Cronk pull down an offensive rebound and score on the putback. The second possession ended with Amari Welch hitting a 3-pointer. Just over a minute later, Welch connected from 3-point range again, and The Cru led 8-4.
UMHB put together another 5-0 run at the end of the first, and Josie Bruder—who finished with a team-high 18 points—converted on a jumper for the first points of the second quarter. But The Cru wouldn’t score again for the next four-and-a-half minutes, a difficult drought only compounded by Emory making seven of its next 10 shots as part of a 15-0 spurt that put the Eagles in front by eight.
A short-range score from Cronk ended UMHB’s scoreless stretch, but the visitors from Atlanta went right back down the floor and answered with a jumper from Chloe Kruesser off Mary Mullinax’s fourth assist of the day. That sparked another significant run from Emory, who scored 10 of the final 12 points of the quarter, capped by Lauren Walsh’s midrange jumpshot just three seconds before the halftime buzzer.
The momentum didn’t die down during the intermission, either. Emory opened the second half on a 7-2 run while UMHB’s cold shooting stretch carried on. The Eagles widened their lead to as many as 27 points in the third quarter, outscoring The Cru, 21-11, in the 10 minutes out of halftime. Emory’s crisp passing and transition offense carried those scoring runs, as the Eagles pushed the ball upcourt efficiently and used their athleticism to finish with layups at the rim while sprinkling in midrange shots and a handful of timely 3s.
The chemistry stemming from having eight juniors and seniors in the rotation displayed itself in that offensive rhythm, as the Eagles tallied 23 assists on 32 made shots (71.8% assist rate). It was the most assists by a UMHB opponent in a game played in Belton since a Sul Ross State, coached at the time by Novak-Lenoir, dished out 23 in a Jan. 6, 2022 loss. Emory also shot 43.2% from the field, led by 17 points from freshman Tatum Olson in the Falls Church, Virginia native’s second collegiate game. Mullinax, a senior, and Alexandra Loucopoulos, a junior, each had 14 points in Emory’s second 80-point output of the season’s opening weekend.
The game was well in hand by the time the fourth quarter began, but that didn’t stop UMHB from doing all it could to gain ground on the Eagles’ commanding lead. The Cru went 5-of-9 from 3-point range in the fourth, surpassing in one quarter their entire 3-point total (4) from Friday’s loss to Whitman, and fought their way through contact on drives to the rim, aiming to match Emory’s intensity.
With just over two minutes left, Bruder dove on the floor to secure an offensive rebound, which led to a pair of free throws from Rachel Okoye. One possession later, after a stop on the defensive end, Bruder connected on her third 3 of the game off an assist from freshman Marissa Hernandez, who played double-digit minutes for the second game in a row. With under 1:30 left, Cronk ended one Emory possession with a heads-up steal, then ended another with a blocked shot.
Multiple times down the stretch, a Crusader dove for a loose ball, chased down an offensive rebound, or intercepted a pass on the defensive end. Those moments may not have come often enough for UMHB to make a run at a win, but were clear positives as The Cru redirects its focus towards the upcoming three-game swing in Southern California.
“Right now, our games are still harder than our practices,” Novak-Lenoir said. “We need to flip that. So that’s what our goal is right now. We’ve got to change some stuff up structurally in practice, we need to try some different lineups, get creative to find a better offensive flow for this group.
“It hurt us not having Amillion Fowler [due to injury], who is somebody we know is a veteran and is that aggressive, energy player. We missed her today. But it’s a chance for somebody to step up. There were some big moments, but we still have yet to play 40 minutes.”
The pursuit of that complete-game performance will continue in the coming week, as UMHB opens the road portion of its schedule at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (1-1) at 4 p.m. CT (6 p.m. local time) on Friday. The Cru will also face Redlands (1-0) and La Verne (1-0) on the West Coast.
| Box Score | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | Final |
| Emory | 13 | 25 | 21 | 21 | 80 |
| UMHB | 18 | 6 | 11 | 24 | 59 |
