The Stormers women cruised to a victory over the College of Lake County Lancers on MATC’s home court on Tuesday, Nov. 11 by a final score of 71-40. Punishing defense forced CLC to cough up possession 42 times, which led to easy transitions buckets for MATC time after time after time, merely rinsing and repeating like the directions on a shampoo bottle.
“I had a couple turnovers,” said MATC guard/forward Ashley Oldenburg. “Turnovers forced, that is.” Oldenburg was one of seven different Stormers that registered a steal. Forward Taishae Hunter was especially deft of hand, taking the ball away from the hapless Lancers four times to go along with her 11 points, five rebounds, and one block.
“I feel like they were an okay team,” Hunter said after the game, dissatisfied with her team’s dominance. “I feel like we could have done a better job playing defense on them.”
The Stormers couldn’t have played much better in the first half, jumping out to a 20-4 lead in the first nine minutes and heading into the locker room for halftime up 43-15. Lake County did not lie down and die, however, and were able to keep pace as the game progressed.
“The biggest thing for us,” shared MATC head coach Jeff Lorenz, “we didn’t keep up the pace like I had asked for out of the box. We kind of laid back a little bit and that’s the thing with a highly freshmen dominant team.”
MATC displayed impressive ball movement when they did have to operate a half-court offense, swinging the rock around and working it in near the hoop.
“Good things come when we pound the ball in,” Lorenz stated. “We’re big all-around, I mean we have two 6’2″  girls. But once the girls understand that we can score anytime inside, we’re going to be hard to contend with.”
Guard DeAndrea Jones scored 14 points and grabbed eight boards to lead MATC in both categories while going a perfect 8-for-8 at the free-throw line.
Trisha Patton, guard, and Jasmine Gray, forward, each scored double digits as well with 11 and 10, respectively.
A bright spot for CLC was the effort of Kaylie Kanzler, guard, who found her stroke after gunning on empty early on to finish with 22 points and 10 rebounds.