By MUNCIE — Before the season began, Ball State women's basketball coach Brady Sallee said he expected his team to take "some punches in the face" during its tough nonconference schedule.
In Ball State's second game of the season, High Point rolled into Worthen Arena and landed a haymaker. The Cardinals fell behind early and never managed to take the lead, falling to the Panthers, 78-71, at home on Saturday, Nov. 7.
"One of those shoot-yourself-in-the-foot games," Sallee said. "I feel like every time we got it to within striking distance, we just shot ourselves in the foot a little bit. Credit High Point, that's a good basketball team, well-coached, a lot of passion, and they're clearly going to win a lot of basketball games. These early season tests, we could go play a bunch of different kinds of people, and maybe it'd be fool's gold.
"But man, you get punched in the mouth, and that's when you learn the most about yourself."
The matchup between Ball State and High Point was one of the best games across the NCAA women's basketball Saturday slate, pitting Sallee's consistently strong Cardinals program against the reigning Big South Conference champion Panthers. Both programs have appeared in the NCAA Tournament within the last two years (Ball State in 2025, High Point in both 2025 and 2026), and both were picked to win their conferences this season in the respective preseason coaches polls.
High Point got off to a scorching hot start, ripping off an early 9-0 run and going 4-for-8 from deep in the first quarter, after which the Panthers led 22-15. Third-year forward Juliann Woodard had the hot hand for the Panthers early on, and she kept it going into the second as they built a lead as high as 15 points. Woodard finished the first half with 16 points and was 4-of-5 from long range as High Point took a nine-point lead into halftime.
Meanwhile, it became evident early on that Ball State's offense would have to run through fifth-year forward Tessa Towers. The 6-foot-5 all-MAC forward had 11 points on 5-for-8 shooting at half, but the rest of the Cardinals struggled to really heat up. Ball State finished the first half shooting 12-for-35 (34%) from the field and 4-for-15 (27%) from 3-point range compared to 41% from the field and 54% from 3 for High Point.
Things didn't get much better for Ball State in the second half. The Cardinals created plenty of scoring opportunities with open looks and getting to the free-throw line, but they simply could not find the bottom of the net. The Cardinals finished the game 17-for-31 on layup attempts, 7-for-31 from distance and 8-for-18 from the free-throw line.
"I'd say it's probably a mental thing and kind of just a toughness thing too, to go put it on the rim and also have that mentality to also score it as well," Towers said. "We had good looks, we just couldn't finish them."
Despite the offensive inefficiencies, Ball State was able to keep things close in the second half thanks to some defensive adjustments that kept High Point from lighting them up from 3-point land again. The Cardinals' perimeter defense was much more aggressive and limited the Panthers' outside looks.
High Point went 3-for-9 from deep in the second half and had multiple scoreless droughts of two-plus minutes, but Ball State just couldn't string together a long run of its own. Meanwhile, fifth-year guard Taylor Feldman got the hot hand for High Point, scoring 12 second-half points to finish with a team-high 21.
"We did talk about the fact that we knew they were going to shoot it, and we let them make seven of them," Sallee said. "We were just soft. We were so bad preparing that I just think it took us about 25 minutes to figure it out."
Towers led Ball State with a 23-point, 11-rebound double-double, while freshman Lillian Barnes continued her strong start to her collegiate career with 20 points, seven rebounds and three assists off the bench. Third-year guard Grace Kingery overcame a slow first half to finish with 13 points but shot an uncharacteristic 1-for-8 from distance.
Sallee took issue with his team's lack of preparedness for the matchup and called them out multiple times in the postgame press conference for what he perceived as bad practices in the lead up to the game.
"We were putrid in practice yesterday," Sallee said. "There's some teams that have the maturity level to be really bad in practice, I've had a couple of those, believe me — the Ally Becki group was not great in practice every day — but when it came to game time, they knew the scout, they knew the job, and they went out and executed. Our team showed me that we can't, so we can't practice like we did on Friday and expect to play any different."
Ball State's upcoming schedule doesn't get any easier, as the Cardinals are preparing to host back-to-back top-25 teams. No. 7 Louisville comes to town on Thursday, Nov. 12, and No. 22 Illinois will follow on Wednesday, Nov. 18. As Ball State looks to regroup and potentially pull off an upset or two, the players have heard Sallee's message and plan to approach future practices with a new energy.
"As a goal for our team, leading up to practices or whatever, I think we all need to bring more energy," Towers said. "Focus on each other in that way, really just come together. We all know we need to practice hard and play hard, we talked about that, and we know what we have to do. It's just a matter of fact that we have to get it done."
Contact Cade Hampton via email at cbhampton@usatodayco.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @CadeHamp10.
This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: Ball State women's basketball falls to High Point in mid-major battle
https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/ball-state-womens-basketball-falls-232525677.html
