Humes, outside shooting lead to comeback victory

View photos of the women’s basketball team in action.

Outside shooting by the Kent State women’s basketball team gave the Flashes a win over Ohio on Saturday afternoon at the M.A.C. Center. But while she didn’t even attempt a 3, sophomore guard Jamilah Humes stole the show.

Humes scored 20 points to lead Kent State (13-3, 2-2 Mid-American Conference) to a 78-74 overtime comeback win against Ohio. As a team, the Flashes shot 12-of-22 from the 3-point line, making long shots to tie and go ahead in scoring.

“I’m really proud of our team’s effort in the second half of the game,” Kent State coach Bob Lindsay said. “We weren’t playing very well. We were outplayed pretty much for the first half of the game and part of the second half. Somehow we found a way to hang in there and obviously increase our effort level defensively and make some plays.”

Poor shooting and rebounding led to Kent State digging a 10-point hole by the end of the first half. The Bobcats outrebounded the Flashes 27-13 and shot 45.2 percent.

“The halftime speech that coach Lindsay gave us, he really got into us pretty bad,” Humes said. “We weren’t playing defense at all as a team and me personally. We knew we were better than that. It was really all about effort. Once we all gave in a collective effort, things just came.”

In the second half, Ohio quickly scored twice to gain its largest lead of the game at 40-26. From there, Humes took over the game.

The guard scored eight of her 14 second-half points to spark a 19-6 run, which gave Kent State its first lead of the game at 47-46.

The team also caught fire from behind the arc. In the final 13:28 of the second half, junior guard Rachel Bennett, freshman guard Jena Stutzman, sophomore forward Chenel Harris and sophomore guard Stephanie Gibson went a combined 6-of-7 on 3-pointers.

“We’ve always had confidence with our 3-point shooters,” Bennett said. ” . We’ve got a lot of players that can hit the 3. We’re confident with that shot. If it’s not going in the first half, we have a positive attitude going into the second half. We know it’s going to fall.”

With under a minute to play, Stutzman drained a 3-pointer to tie the game 68-68 and send it into overtime.

Six points by Bennett in overtime gave Kent State its second MAC win and fourth overtime win this season.

“There was no doubt in our minds that if we did go into overtime that we were going to win,” Humes said. “One of our goals this year is to win in overtime, and we have not lost in overtime yet this season – and I don’t plan to.”

The Flashes will travel on Wednesday to face rival Akron at 7 p.m. at James A. Rhodes Arena.

Contact sports reporter Josh Johnston at [email protected].