
Nothing will come easy for the UW-Eau Claire women’s basketball team during the final stretch of the season. Its final three opponents have a combined overall record of 41-22.
But even the teams at the bottom of the conference are gunning at the first place Blugolds.
“We’re going to get everybody’s best game and I’ve told our team we want that,” coach Tonja Englund said. “This time of the year you want to continue to get pushed.”
UW-River Falls, 1-10 in the WIAC and winner of just one of its previous eight games, provided the push Saturday at Zorn Arena, sticking with Eau Claire for the first 30 minutes before allowing the Blugolds to go on a 19-4 run en route to a 63-52 Blugold victory.
After River Falls hit one of its 12 3-pointers to tie the game at 43, Englund called a timeout.
“We talked in that timeout about being more patient, making the extra pass and going inside,” Englund said. “And during that stretch Michelle (Burns) got to touch the ball a lot. And I think that was the difference. We went with our go-to and I think that we did a really nice job of knowing our strength down the stretch.”
Once Eau Claire focused on giving Burns the ball inside, River Falls could not answer. The senior forward finished with 25 points on 9-15 shooting and added 13 rebounds.
After a flurry of Falcon 3-pointers to cut into Eau Claire’s lead, the Blugolds upped the tempo and started to run the court and pressure River Falls.
“One of our goals this whole season was that the defense was going to create offense for us,” Burns said. “When we came out in the second half we were down a little bit on offense but we stepped up on defense, got a couple steals, got a couple boards and just pushed it back at them.”
As a result, River Falls made only one-of-four from behind the arc over the final 10 minutes, a stat Englund attributed to fatigue.
“I think part of that was just the pace after a while because you start to get tired,” she said. “We were trying to push it back at them so it became more of a transition type of game.”
Junior Heidi Arciszewski complemented Burns with 12 points and six rebounds. Arciszewski and Burns broke the Falcon 2-3 zone inside, drawing many fouls and combining for 15 free throw attempts. River Falls as a team had only five.
Eau Claire’s next test comes at UW-Stevens Point Wednesday. The pointers are 17-4 overall and 8-4 in the WIAC.
The win puts the Blugolds at 18-4 overall and 12-1 in the conference. The last three games will determine if Eau Claire can gain the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament. UW-Whitewater is 11-1 in the WIAC and 20-1 overall.
“We can’t really bank on anybody else losing down the stretch,” Burns said. “But I think it is definitely important for us that we . win these last three conference games because Whitewater is a tough team and they’re definitely going to want to win the last three, also.”