TACOMA, Wash. It's a shame most everyone is going to talk only about the edge-of-your-seat finish Saturday night at Memorial Fieldhouse.
Though the frantic, nail-biting, cover your eyes, aw heck…
fall out of your seat finish was memorable, so too was the game's first 39 minutes of a 69-67 Whitman win over host University of Puget Sound in the second round of the NCAA 2017 Division III Women's Basketball Championship.
The victory sends the 16th-ranked Blues (25-4) into the NCAA Sweet 16, while the No. 9 Loggers (26-3) will think of what-ifs for many months.
Saturday's ending was classic Whitman-Puget Sound basketball. After all, thanks to the NCAA pairings this was the fourth meeting between the two teams this season and second in three games -- Whitman upset the host Loggers one week ago in the championship final of the Northwest Conference tournament to earn the league's automatic bid into the national tournament.
The teams know each other. Too well. By now the players know the
other team's relatives who come to watch the games, maybe even by name.
Before the NWC final Puget Sound had earned a pair of regular-season overtime wins over the Blues, but lost perhaps the more important game of the trio they played.
Whitman played its way into Saturday's Regional final by getting its uniforms good and dirty Friday in a win over No. 23 George Fox -- also a fourth-time match-up this season. The Blues collapsed on every rebound, hit the floor for every loose ball and generally sold out their uniforms and bodies for 76-72 victory.
Saturday against Puget Sound the Blues were unchanged from Friday's final horn.
They broke out early, seizing a 9-2 lead on
Alysse Ketner's close-in jumper, before building the advantage to 18-8 at the end of the opening quarter. Mady Burnett put the exclamation point on that 10-minute frame with a quarter-ending trey from near the top of the arc.
Whitman was hot, and UPS was not. And that carried over into a second quarter during which Whitman cultivated its game to push the lead to 18, 37-19, when
Makana Stone dropped in a turn-around jumper from about nine feet out.
The ending! Yes, just wait.
Though the Loggers chipped a few points off their deficit heading into halftime, 39-26, much of the third quarter was akin to what the first half was like. Twice Whitman held 16-point leads, but this time Puget Sound was starting to make some headway.
They knew that letting Whitman build such leads was paramount to failure, but this was, after all, a team that lost just one game -- to another NCAA tournament participant -- before faltering in the NWC final. And sure enough the deficit was only nine.
But then it was back to 13! But next it was only a seven-point game. But then it was back at 13 when
Maegen Martin hit a jumper in the final seconds of the third quarter for Whitman.
The ending … getting closer.
The Loggers began chopping, not chipping, but chopping away at the deficit in the early minutes of the fourth quarter, pulling within five, 54-49, in the first three minutes of the frame. Whitman wouldn't score until
Chelsi Brewer drained a three from the left wing at the 6:47 mark.
With two minutes to go the Blues were leading by nine, 66-57.
At this stage of the season -- the tournament -- everyone's a good team. There's no gimme's and UPS lived up to that thought.
Consecutive 3s slashed the Whitman advantage to just 66-63 with 1:03 on the clock.
And the wild stuff hadn't even started yet!
Casey Poe hit a jumper with 34 ticks left and
Emily Rommel pulled down a defensive rebound on the ensuing UPS possession to calm the throng of more than 2,000 at the Fieldhouse.
A foul in the offensive end put Poe at the line where she hit the first of her two tries, lifting Whitman to a 69-63 lead with 25 seconds remaining.
Racing down the court the Loggers popped quick pass to the top of the arc where Elizabeth Prewitt found nothing but net, sending the Loggers faithful into near delirium.
Twenty-one seconds remained but Whitman had possession and worked its way free down the court. A tie-up in that end was signaled Whitman ball…but the first of several referee huddles in the final minute ensued, this one discovering that the arrow hadn't been flipped the last time there was a tie-up.
Loggers basketball. Seventeen seconds.
They pushed up court and got off a trey to try to tie the game, but it was off the mark and Rommel came down with the rebound. In the mass of seeking outlet passes the ball was turned over, into the hands of Samone Jackson right in front of her Puget Sound bench, and with the clock nearing all zeroes.
The only choice was to go up through the mass of bodies that had been wrestling for the loose ball and hope a miracle shot would beat the final horn.
It did not.
But Jackson was fouled. Or was she? Another referee convene. Yes, she was fouled. And yes, with 0.4 seconds on the game clock Jackson was going to the free-throw line to shoot three -- for the tie.
The first one was solid, nothing but net. Two-point game. The next one was ... off the mark.
Jackson's only hope was to purposely miss the third attempt and hope for a miracle put-back.
That wouldn't happen. As the Loggers stood in disbelief, the Whitman players raced to form their own mid-court throng of celebrants.
Maegen Martin -- of whom Poe says, "when we're on the court together, we just work well together" -- came off the bench to lead Whitman in scoring with 16 points, while Brewer (14) and Rommel (11) also broke into double-digits. Ketner finished with nine rebounds but nine different players came down with at least one board to help Whitman earn a 45-42 edge on the glass.
Alexis Noren notched a double-double for Puget Sound in the loss, scoring 14 points and pulling down a game-high 10 rebounds.
It may not have ended as pretty as it had started, and the players may have been a little mentally and physically drained from Friday night's Round 1 thriller, but when heads hit the pillows Saturday night there will be only 16 teams left to vie for the national championship.
And Whitman is one of those special 16 squads.
