The Ferris State University women’s bas­ket­ball team accom­plished some­thing never done before in their his­tory this past Saturday night as they took down Findlay University 80–72 on the road at Findlay’s home arena.

“It felt great,” Ferris senior Lindsey Pettit said. “My last three years our team didn’t accom­plish this, so it feels really good to finally get [on this level of play].”

The Bulldogs started off slow and went into half­time trail­ing with a score of 37–35, but the Bulldogs came ready to play after the half and bat­tled until the very end to come away with a sweet victory.

For the Bulldogs, senior guard Tricia Principe led the way with a big night of 27 points. Following Principe were sopho­more guard Sarah DeShone and fresh­man for­ward Christina Branch with14 points each.

The key to the high scor­ing win was the sec­ond half offen­sive per­for­mance, in which the Bulldogs shot over 70 per­cent from the field.

However, offen­sive dom­i­nance isn’t what the Bulldogs’ main strength is; accord­ing to Pettit, “Our biggest strength is that we crash the boards hard, offen­sively and defen­sively we try to get those rebounds.”

Ferris State University also held the edge in rebounds by a mar­gin of 35–30, in large part due to Christina Branch’s eight rebounds com­ing from all over the court.

Even though this win clinches the Bulldogs the GLIAC North Division crown, it doesn’t mean they are cel­e­brat­ing too early; they have two games to go before host­ing the first round of the tour­na­ment Wednesday.

“Well, we still have a cou­ple games to go on the sea­son, but we still have to focus and get ready for the tour­na­ment,” Pettit said.

This Bulldog team’s hard work was rewarded with this big win on the road as this game fea­tured nine lead changes and ten ties through­out the contest.

FSU’s 17–5 over­all record with an notable 14–2 mark in con­fer­ence play is impres­sive, but it looks to build on that as it plays its home finale on Feb. 22 against Hillsdale College before fin­ish­ing the reg­u­lar sea­son at Grand Valley State on Feb. 25.

As the Bulldogs head into tour­na­ment play there is plenty of opti­mism that FSU could come away as the cham­pion as they have the oppor­tu­nity to accom­plish things no Bulldog bas­ket­ball team has
done before.