“She did really well,” women's basketball Head Coach Suzy Merchant said. “Seven offensive rebounds is basically half of our team’s offensive rebounds and you know that’s just energy and effort for sure."

MSU’s post players, including Farquhar, provided most of the team's scoring while the guards struggled to knock down shots from anywhere on the court. Farquhar, along with graduate student forward Alisia Smith and junior forward Taiyier Parks, accounted for more than half of the Spartans' total points. 

Despite playing four years at Purdue, Farquhar was ready to take on the Boilermakers in green and white.

“Honestly I try to treat the game like any other game,” Farquhar said. “I think that I was a little more competitive today which was natural, but it’s just any other game.”

In addition to her solid offensive performance, Farquhar brought her competitive spirit and strong defense to her first game against her former team. Her competitiveness and pure strength allowed her to create scoring opportunities for her new team. 

“For offensive rebounding, I try to tell myself that the play is never over until you’ve actually tried to go and pursue the ball, so just making sure I’m holding off whoever’s defending me so I can have an opportunity for that or make an opportunity for other people, so that was kind of my mindset going in,” Farquhar said. 

In the second half, there was a play sequence where she played aggressive defense at the three-point line and ran at her opponent, forcing her to lose control of the ball out of bounds and create an offensive opportunity off the turnover. To add to the scoring, seven of her nine rebounds were offensive rebounds that gave the Spartans second-chance points. 

“I think I just did my job,” Farquhar said. “A lot of the points that I got was off of rebounding and I think that’s like my biggest skillset, and then defensively, just making sure I’m in the passing lanes and trying to score off of that.”

The Spartans were in need of someone to step up while the Purdue defense locked down star senior guard Nia Clouden. Clouden is averaging 21.5 points per game and broke the women’s program record for most points scored in a single game when she scored 50 points against Florida Gulf Coast University, but the Boilermakers held her to just seven points.

“I think that when that happens the best that we can do is make sure that everyone else is doing what they need to do,” Farquhar said. “Obviously we’ve had to rely on her. She’s a great player, she’s the heart of our team, so we need to make sure that when she’s having nights like that, that we’re also stepping up and doing our role even better than what we usually do.”

Farquhar and the Spartans will have a chance to bounce back from the loss and revitalize their play when they travel to Columbus, Ohio to take on Ohio State on Wednesday.