Despite playing without leading-scorer Stephanie Raymond, the NIU women’s basketball team defeated Miami-Ohio on the road 51-49 with late-game heroics by Mary Basic.

When the game was on the line, the junior guard came through in the clutch by hitting a game-winning jump shot with eight seconds left.

NIU coach Carol Owens said despite her 0-for-9 shooting up to that point, the team had faith in Basic to take the last shot.

“Even though [Basic] got into foul trouble, she kept her head,” Owens said. “Part of their job is to keep their teammates up and they all did that with Mary. She came through with the game-winning shot.”

The road win is the third of the year for NIU. For the first time all season, NIU has won back-to-back road games.

The victory puts the Huskies record at 9-11 overall and 5-4 in the MAC West. The loss pushes Miami to 7-13 and 2-7 in the MAC East.

After the game, Owens said she knew her team would be motivated after its triple-overtime win against Buffalo.

“Before this game, we talked about why we were successful against Buffalo,” Owens said. “We were aggressive, we had leadership on the court, and we refused to lose. All of that carried over into this game.”

With Raymond out, NIU needed someone to take the scoring load. Luckily for NIU, Whitney Lowe and Kristin Wiener were up to the challenge. Coming off the bench, Lowe scored 18 points and grabbed six rebounds, while Wiener scored 14 points and added five rebounds.

While Lowe and Wiener carried the scoring load for the team, Basic had the lofty task of guarding Miami’s leading scorer Cindi Merrill at 17.1 points per game. Despite Basic’s effort, Merrill scored a game-high 18 points and snatched 10 rebounds.