So, in “Bridge”, a popular card game, the “spades” are the highest-ranked suit. So when long-time Ball State Women’s Basketball Coach Brady Sallee mentioned to me, “ I believe in versatility and certainly think we have it spades this season…” when talking about his No. 1 seeded team it caught my attention because when you look at this squad, they are a very complete and balanced group. They have a plethora of perimeter shooters that can shoot the ball from the outside, plus they’ve brought in some new post players to strengthen their rebounding and rim protection.
On Wednesday, the Cardinals of Ball State will take on the Western Michigan Broncos (No. 8 seed) in the first quarterfinal game of the day at Rocket Arena in Cleveland. The Cardinals earned the No. 1 seed by rolling through their league with a 16-2. They own a 24-7 overall record.
A year ago, the Cardinals came into the MAC tournament as the No. 2 seed but lost to No. 3 seed Kent State in the semifinals.
The Coach
Photo via Ball State Athletics Dept
After the season, Coach Sallee, who’s been on the Ball State sidelines for the past 13 seasons analysed his team’s strengths and weaknesses and mentioned, “You know you set out to try and take all the question marks out of the equation and have answers and I think we did that with this year’s roster. You know at the end of last year we looked at our team and you know in the big games we got beat in the paint and we got beat at the rim and we got got beat rebounding, so we wanted to take care of that and we brought in some real size and some real experience to put around these kids that have been with us for so long.”
The Players
Photo via Ball State Athletics Dept
The squad for Ball State is full of players that can do a variety of things on any given gameday. The team is led in scoring by their senior veteran point guard Ally Becky, with a 13.9 PPG average this season. She’s scored 1,624 points in her career, to go along with 238 steals on the defensive end of the floor. Alex Richards plays down in the paint and is averaging 16.2 PPG and 7.2 rebounds a game. Madelyn Bischoff, one of the team’s three-point specialists, is averaging 10.2 PPG while shooting 35% behind the arc. Lachelle Austin is averaging 10 PPG to go with 57 steals on the season. Elise Stuck is back from injury and averaging 10.4 PPG. Marie Kiefer is averaging 7.4 PPG and 7.3 rebounds a game.
Spades
Coach Sallee loves this team and described its versatility as its strength. He said, “We’ve got a lot of players that can hurt you… We’re not just a one-trick pony where we have to have certain things happen for us to be successful. We can do it a lot of different ways, and it’s kind of the way we tried to build this team. I believe in versatility, and I certainly think we have it in spades.”
He continued, “I think you know our ability to play from the inside out and just step into open three-point shots is a real weapon of ours. You know you have to double our bigs, and you have to spend a lot of time and energy keeping Ally Becki and Lachelle Austin off the rim.”
Ball State has all the pieces to the puzzle, it would seem like, but coach Sallee knows that the MAC is a tough league with great teams. In looking at the tournament and the other top seeds, he went on to say, “ You’ve got a lot of experience at Kent State, you’ve got a lot of experience at Toledo, you’ve got a lot of experience at Buffalo…there’s gonna be a quite a bit of parody. There’s no doubt there should be some good games up there (Cleveland).”
If the Cardinals play their cards right this week and can showcase that versatility in “spades” as Coach Sallee mentioned about his team, then they will be a hard team to beat.
Photo via Ball State Athletics Dept
Remember, the MAC tournament gets started Wednesday with Ball State battling Western Michigan. That game is followed by the next three quarterfinal games. The semifinal games will be played Friday, followed by the championship game on Saturday.
Make sure to follow us here at NEOSI for all the updates starting Wednesday.
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