{"id":16610,"date":"2012-03-09T04:59:15","date_gmt":"2012-03-09T09:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/utnews.utoledo.edu\/?p=16610"},"modified":"2012-03-08T22:15:14","modified_gmt":"2012-03-09T03:15:14","slug":"toledo-tops-northern-illinois-in-mac-tournament-quarterfinals-72-62","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/03_09_2012\/toledo-tops-northern-illinois-in-mac-tournament-quarterfinals-72-62","title":{"rendered":"Toledo tops Northern Illinois in MAC Tournament Quarterfinals, 72-62"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>

Andola Dortch led the Rockets with 24 points.<\/p><\/div>No. 3 seed Toledo held No. 7 seed Northern Illinois scoreless for almost 12 minutes in the second half and notched a 72-62 victory Thursday in the Mid-American Conference Tournament Quarterfinals contest inside Quicken Loans Arena. <\/p>\n

With the victory, the Rockets (21-8) will advance to the MAC Tourney Semifinals for the fifth straight season and face No. 2 seed Eastern Michigan Friday, March 9, at approximately 2:30 p.m.<\/p>\n

Sophomore Andola Dortch paced the 2011-12 MAC West Division co-champs with a game-high 24 points and a contest-best eight assists. Dortch was instrumental in Toledo\u2019s second-half surge, tallying 14 points after the intermission to finish in double digits for the team-best 23rd time this season.<\/p>\n

Senior Haylie Linn added 12 points in a winning effort, while junior Kyle Baumgartner tossed in nine points, and senior Courtney Ingersoll and junior Lecretia Smith totaled eight points each to help UT defeat the Huskies (14-17) for the third time this season.<\/p>\n

NIU\u2019s Courtney Shelton hit a jumper to give the visitors a 44-40 lead with 18:08 left in regulation. Northern Illinois did not score again until Natecia Augusta converted a pair of free throws at the 6:45 mark. The Rockets took advantage of the drought and reeled off 14 straight points to establish a double-digit cushion.<\/p>\n

Toledo put it in cruise control from there and did not allow its lead to dip below nine points for the remainder of the contest to improve to 3-1 against NIU in the MAC Tourney. <\/p>\n

Dortch poured in eight of UT\u2019s final 16 points to preserve the victory and set up a rematch with Eastern Michigan from last year\u2019s MAC Tournament Semifinals, when the Eagles upset the top-seed Rockets, 61-55. <\/p>\n

Kim Davis paced NIU with 14 points, followed by Amanda Corral with 13 points.<\/p>\n

The Huskies controlled the contest early on, receiving three triples from Shelton to shoot out to a 15-10 lead with 14:19 remaining in the first half.<\/p>\n

NIU continued to knock down shots as the first period wore on, and a trey by Corral made the difference 22-12 at 11:51. Northern Illinois made four of its first six three-point attempts to build an early double-digit cushion.<\/p>\n

UT then started to find its shooting groove as well, utilizing a 10-0 run to knot the score at 34-34 with 4:20 left in the opening stanza. Dortch and Linn spearheaded the burst with five points each.<\/p>\n

Northern Illinois effectively used a pair of timeouts to stall out Toledo\u2019s run, and Corral retaliated with five straight points to give the advantage back to the visitors, 40-38, at the intermission.<\/p>\n

NIU shot a sizzling 57.7 percent (23 of 58) in the first half, but was limited to 25.0 percent (8 of 32) in the second period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toledo beat Northern Illinois, 72-62, and will play Eastern Michigan Friday, March 9, at about 2:30 p.m. in a MAC Tournament semifinal game at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":310,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,7],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16610"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/310"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}