The UW-Richland Roadrunners came to Austin with only five players on their roster.

Thursday, November 16, 2000

The UW-Richland Roadrunners came to Austin with only five players on their roster. In the first minute of play sophomore guard Corinna Studnicka went down with a sprained ankle. She returned to play for a few minutes but for most of the night the Riverland Blue Devils played five-on-four.

In the final three minutes it was a five-on-three advantage when one Richland player fouled out, and Riverland went on to a 74-29 win over the Roadrunners.

"It was kind of confusing playing with a player advantage," Riverland point guard Missy Avery, a freshman out of Blooming Prairie, said. "It was tough to know what to do on defense when you weren’t guarding any one. We did a little better job on offense swinging the ball to the open player against their zone."

The open player in the first half was freshman Samantha Ulrich of Owatonna. She opened the game hitting a trey. She had two others in the game as she scored 20 of her game-high 27 points in the first half.

"She was on fire," Avery said.

"I was cold in warmups," Ulrich said. "I wasn’t expecting that kind of night. I once scored 34 points in high school, as a sophomore. I averaged 11 points per game in high school. I haven’t had that kind of game in a long time."

The Blue Devils ran hard in the first half and went into the locker room with a 46-13 lead.

"The only thing I wasn’t pleased with is the number of fouls we had," Riverland coach Suzy Hebrink said. "They got to the double bonus in both halves of the game. We were not moving our feet on defense and were a little sloppy."

Besides Ulrich’s 20, Tammy May, Alissa Goetzinger, and Melissa Rosel each scored six in the first half. May and Goetzinger ended up with 10 points each in the game, Rosel with eight. Brooke Holets had seven, Missy Avery five, Jessica Callahan four, and Sara Nagele three.

The Blue Devils played tough on defense allowing just seven field goals in the game, including only one three-pointer. Leanna Hagen was the leading scorer for the Roadrunners with 18.

"At the half we told them to slow down on offense and defense," Hebrink said. "We didn’t want to run the ball or press. We slowed it down so much that we went into sleep mode a couple of times."

To get out of sleep mode Riverland started to run some plays.

"We got a chance to work on our plays in the second half which was nice," Ulrich said.

"It was nice of them to not run the ball up and down the court against us," Richland coach Shane Peterson said. "They showed good sportsmanship. I just got this job in September. I’m going to have to start doing a whole lot of recruiting now. We have a couple of girls who may come out but we haven’t seen them at practice yet."

The Blue Devils (1-1, 0-0) now have five straight road games on their schedule. The first is Saturday at Mid-State Technical College in Wisconsin Rapids, WI. They will be at home for an exhibition game, the Alumni game, on Saturday, Nov. 25.