Marshall University’s women’s basketball team lost to Old Dominion University Thursday, 67-55, in its first game without junior point guard Norrisha Victrum in the Cam Henderson Center.

Marshall’s head coach Matt Daniel revealed before the game Victrum suffered an Achilles heel tear and will miss the rest of the season.

Sophomore guard McKenzie Akers was thrust into the starting point guard role in Victrum’s absence and struggled mightily from the field as a result. Akers finished just 1-9 and 0-7 from three point range.

The first half featured a back and forth affair between both teams but the game was blown open in the second half by a 16-0 run courtesy of the Lady Monarchs. The Thundering Herd’s attempts to claw back fell short as a 9-2 run came too late to change the outcome.

Daniel was upset with his team’s shot selection after it allowed ODU to take a commanding lead.

“When we get behind, we start trying to hit home runs,” Daniel said. “We don’t have any homerun hitters. We talk about chopping wood, we don’t talk about chopping trees or forests.”

Old Dominion’s sophomore guard Jennie Simms leads the team in scoring with 18.4 points per game and no other player on the roster averages double-digits in scoring. However, Simms was held to just two points in the first half but followed that up with 17 points after intermission to finish above her average.

Senior guard AJ Johnson said her team provided Simms an opportunity in the second half and she took advantage.

“We just stopped executing what were supposed to do,” Johnson said. “She just kept going. She didn’t stop.”

Johnson led the Herd in scoring with 17 points.

Marshall drops to 16-12 (8-9) after the defeat, and ODU rises to 18-10 (11-6) after the victory.

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte is next on the slate for the Thundering Herd Saturday for the final game of the regular season and senior night.

Adam Polsky can be contacted at [email protected].