The women’s basketball team closed out the 2012-13 regular season with a 50-58 loss Wednesday at Western Michigan.

NIU took a 22-13 lead after junior guard Ashley Sneed nailed a jump shot with just more than five minutes left in the first half. The Huskies then went on to score only three more points in the half thanks to a 3-pointer by freshman guard Alexis Lindstrom. The Broncos’ 12-3 run tied the game up at halftime, 25-25.

The two teams traded buckets for the beginning of the second half, but in the last eight minutes of the game sophomore guard Jazmine Windham put up 11 points to finish off the Huskies. Windham ended the game with 18 points and shot 4-5 from the 3-point line, something NIU head coach Kathi Bennett said was a big part of the Huskies’ loss.

“We can’t play harder; we had a chance when it was 54-50. We had two open looks and we didn’t finish,” Bennett said. “They had [Windham] come in and hit four of five from three and that is what killed us. It’s frustrating because we really shut down their bigs, which is what we wanted to do inside. We just played really well but we couldn’t come up with the win.”

Sophomore point guard Amanda Corral led the Huskies in scoring and ended the game with a double-double, putting up 18 points and 12 rebounds. At 5 feet 6 inches, Corral has led the team in rebounding with 4.9 per game. Corral says rebounding is something she has always had a knack for.

“It’s something I have always done since high school; I like rebounding,” Corral said. “When a shot goes up I just crash the boards.”

Once again the Huskies struggled to close out on a win that was within reach. Missed buckets cost the Huskies and gave the Broncos the opportunity to close the game out on their senior night. Although Corral led the team in points and rebounds, she was disappointed to end the regular season with a loss.

“I was pretty confident going into this game. I felt like we could get a win, but I think we just have to learn how to finish games,” Corral said. “I mean, we come out strong, but our second half is always weak and when teams make runs we put our heads down and don’t respond to it.”

Corral wasn’t the only one crashing the boards Wednesday night. Senior forward Shaakira Haywood also had a good night in her last regular season game as a Huskie. Haywood grabbed nine rebounds to go with her two points and strong defense in the paint.

“I knew that my role was going to be to box out the big girls,” Haywood said. “They like second-chance points so I started the game focused on rebounding and making sure that I boxed them out and when I did that the ball kind of came easy to me. We started off with the trap and double teaming in the post and I think that helped a lot, they got frustrated early to that so that was really helpful for us.”

The Huskies finish the regular season ranked sixth in the MAC west division. They will look ahead to the beginning of the MAC tournament starting March 10 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland.