YPSILANTI, Mich. — It is hard to imagine Sasha Dailey having a day turn out much better than Saturday did.

The Rogers High School product reached a career milestone, and her Eastern Michigan women’s basketball team claimed a 70-57 victory. The fact the win came against her hometown team, the University of Toledo, simply was icing on the cake.

“I kind of wanted to get to [1,000 points] against Toledo,” Dailey admitted. “It’s very humbling.

“But who wouldn’t want to get that mark against their hometown team? That gives me something to brag about when I go home.”

VIDEO: Toledo-Eastern Michigan

Dailey finished with 20 points, three assists, three rebounds, and three steals on the day she reached the 1,000-point mark for the Eagles (6-8, 2-1 MAC). Teammate Danielle Minott contributed 15 points and Courtnie Lewis had 12 in the win.

Meanwhile, Kaayla McIntyre had 25 points and 11 rebounds for Toledo (9-5, 1-2). Jay-Ann Bravo-Harriott added 11 for the Rockets, who made just 38.2 percent of their shots and turned the ball over 17 times.

But the bigger problems came on defense, as EMU shot 46.3 percent from the floor and outscored the UT in every quarter.

“We’ve been a team that has always hung our hat on defense,” Toledo coach Tricia Cullop said. “At times, when kids [on the other team] are making difficult shots, it can be tough.

“But the back-breakers came when we had defensive breakdowns, and that got clean looks at the basket. I’m frustrated most about our lack of communication. ... That’s something we have to get back to.”

Eastern Michigan made the first run of the contest, using a 6-0 run to lead 11-6 at the 2 minute, 36 second mark of the first quarter. In that run, the Rockets missed all three shots they took, and by quarter’s end they had turned the ball over seven times.

“Lazy passes,” Cullop said to describe some of the turnovers. “It’s not something we were surprised to see, but we weren’t as cautious as we should have, maybe as deliberate as we should have been.”

Toledo used a 7-0 run early in the second to retake the lead, which happened when Mariella Santucci hit a 3-pointer that made the score 18-17 with 7:37 on the clock.

But Eastern Michigan took command from that point, using runs of 7-0 and 12-0 to race to a 36-23 lead with 15 seconds left in the half.

In that run, the Eagles made 3-of-4 on 3s and all six free throws they attempted; Toledo shot just 2-of-8 from the field, turning the ball over four times during that span. A layup by McIntyre, a Notre Dame Academy graduate, at the horn made it 36-25 at halftime.

“During that stretch, it wasn’t all layups. They were hitting some outside shots,” Cullop said of EMU’s decisive run. “And that can be frustrating, because we couldn’t match them.”

The Rockets never were able to climb out of that second-quarter hole. While Eastern Michigan’s lead in the third never was more than 14 points, UT came no closer than seven. The same held true in the fourth, as Toledo never was able to cut its deficit to single digits.

“Credit Eastern, because they did a good job of capturing scores when they needed them,” Cullop said. “They were very patient; they weren’t trying to score early in the shot clock. They were very deliberate, and they slowed us down.”

The Rockets offense sputtered outside of McIntyre, who made 9-of-16 shots from the floor and 7-of-10 at the free-throw line. When you take her numbers out of the equation, Toledo was 12-for-39 on field goals (30.8 percent) and 4-for-9 from the foul line.

“The one thing we have to make sure we’re not doing is watching her — then hoping she does a great job so we can clap for her,” Cullop said of McIntyre and the rest of her team. “We’ve got to have good movement on the perimeter.

“We have capable shooters. We just struggled to put shots down.”

Meanwhile Dailey’s teammate at Eastern Michigan and Rogers, Tori Easley, said the 2-1 start in MAC play is a important step forward after the Eagles went 1-17 in the league last season.

“It’s brought a lot of confidence to us,” said Easley, who finished with two points, one rebound and one steal. “It’s shown us what we can do, and what we’re capable of.

“We haven’t really hit our ceiling yet. That’s why this will really help us moving forward.”

Contact John Wagner at: jwagner@theblade.com, 419-724-6481, or on Twitter @jwagnerblade.

First Published January 6, 2018, 10:18 p.m.