Lady Rebels fade late in loss to Northridge

Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2000 | 10:01 a.m.

UNLV's women's basketball team had not played a game for nine days going into its nonconference match with Cal State Northridge Tuesday night at the Thomas & Mack Center.

Apparently, the Lady Rebels felt like making it 10.

UNLV built an eight-point lead at the intermission and went ahead by 12 points a minute into the second half before apparently deciding to take the rest of the night off.

Northridge took advantage of the Lady Rebels' dismal shooting performance in the second half and outscored its hosts 47-20 in the final 19 minutes of the game en route to an 84-69 victory.

UNLV trailed by only four points with 3:47 left to play but the Lady Rebels could not manage to score a field goal in the final three and a half minutes and Northridge made 13 of 16 free throws down the stretch to secure the win.

"You have to come out and be ready to play (and we weren't)," UNLV head coach Regina Miller said. "We weren't focused on what we needed to do.

"The first five minutes of the second half was when we didn't come out and build on the lead that we had. We had opportunities ... but we just didn't execute."

UNLV (6-2) came into the game shooting 46.1 percent from the field -- tops among all Mountain West Conference teams -- but proceeded to make only 26 percent of its shots in the second half (9 of 35) and 33 percent for the game.

Northridge, on the other hand, made 54 percent of its shots on the night, including a blistering 63 percent in the decisive second half.

"I give them a lot of credit because they played their best game all year," Miller said of the 4-5 Matadors.

UNLV wasted a 17-point performance by junior forward Linda Frohlich and a career-first double-double by senior forward Brooke Ingalls, who had 11 points and 11 rebounds.

"I thought Brooke played a solid game all around tonight," Miller said. "If everyone could have played like Brooke Ingalls, we wouldn't have had any problems with this team."

Kristi Rose, a 6-4 senior center, led the Matadors with a season-high 26 points.

Miller said the loss should help to inspire the Lady Rebels, who play their next six games at home, including a Saturday night contest against Pacific.

"I hope this fires them up a little bit," Miller said. "The players are down because they know they didn't do the things they needed to do to win the game.

"We've got to bounce back because we have another enemy coming in here (Saturday) that wants to beat us up so we've got to be ready for Pacific and Pacific beat us last year."