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College Basketball: Cal drops 100 on SU
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Article RatingA couple of numbers stick out from Wednesday night’s Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) Western Division matchup between the Shippensburg and California (Pa.) womens’ basketball teams.
The first number — 200 — that’s how many wins Vulcan coach Darcie Vincent now has thanks to her team’s victory over the Lady Raiders.
The second number — 100 — that’s how many points California dropped on Shippensburg to get coach Vincent her milestone victory.
The Vulcans rudely ended the Lady Raiders’ six-game winning streak with Wednesday’s 100-74 victory. Before Wednesday, no team had scored more than 76 points against Shippensburg (14-4, 2-1 PSAC West) this season. To put things a little more into perspective, no team has ever scored 100 points against a team coached by Kristy Trn, who has nine seasons and 250 games under her belt.
The last time Shippensburg allowed 100 points was a decade ago, March 18, 1998, when the Lady Raiders fell 122-84 to Emporia State in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Championships.
So what happened on Wednesday night?
Well, it wasn’t a matter of the Lady Raiders playing bad, they played about as well as they have all year and got double-digit scoring outings from Elise Mercer (career-high 21 points), Megan Fogle (20), Lauren Beckley (15) and Kasey Gardner (10).
Wednesday’s game came down to how well the Vulcans (15-2, 2-0 PSAC West) played.
Led by big girl Kayla Smith (25 points), who was 12-of-13 from the field, California was a red-hot 55.3 percent from the field (42 of 76).
Other top scorers for the Vulcans were Brooque Williams (23 points), Amber Dubyak (17 points), Crystal Andrews (14) and Shaquetta Mance (14).
“California is the premiere program in the PSAC, they’re fully-funded and have already won a National Championship,” Trn said. “We need to learn how to be champions and take the adversity as it comes.”
Early on, Shippensburg did the same thing to the Vulcans that it’s done to most of its other opponents — score a lot of points.
The Lady Raiders raced out to a 20-12 lead before California battled back with an 18-9 run that put the Vulcans back on top, 30-29. From there, California seemed unstoppable.
The teams put on a scoring show for the remainder of the half and with 4:55 remaining, the Vulcans sank eight straight shots. Shippensburg, not quite ready to lay down, went shot-for-shot with California, making five of its last six shots.
But the Vulcans got the last laugh in the first half, with Shaquetta Mance burying an NBA-range 3-pointer just before the halftime buzzer to give her team a 53-47 lead over Shippensburg.
“I was very surprised to see us shoot as well as we did,” said Vincent, who starts three underclassmen, including a pair of freshmen. “The kids weren’t nervous or tight at all, and I think it’s because they don’t quite get it yet how serious and important this game was.”
The Vulcans went for the jugular to start the second half. They threw several diffent defensive looks at Shippensburg; the traps worked the most effectively and cost the Lady Raiders turnovers, held possessions and early timeouts, not to mention it quieted Shippensburg’s shooters, holding them to 28.1 percent shooting (9 of 32).
California built leads of 59-47, 68-51, 84-65, before the Lady Raiders used the last of their energy to string together an 8-2 run to pull within 13, 86-73.
“They hit everything and we couldn’t seem to buy a basket,” Trn said. “We handled their defense well in the first half, but things were different in the second half.”
The Vulcans spent the last six minutes of the game stringing together a 14-0 run to get to 100 points. California’s Lindsay Johnson nailed a 3-pointer with 49 seconds remaining to push her team’s scoring total to 100.
Coach Vincent was asked if she expected her team to score as many points against Shippensburg as her team did.
“Gosh no, I didn’t think we’d score a hundred against Kristy’s team,” Vincent said. “Kristy’s going to be showing her team a lot of tape on this game and I have a feeling that they’ll be ready and do better when we meet the second time around.”
The Lady Raiders are back in action today and will travel to Clarion for a 1 p.m. game.
Mens’ Basketball
California 69, Shippensburg 57
For 31 minutes, the youthful Shippensburg Raiders showed glimpses of what the future could hold while playing toe-to-toe with traditional PSAC power California (Pa.).
But in the last nine minutes, the Raiders (6-12, 0-3 PSAC West) did what most teams with really young players do, they made mistakes.
“We had just 11 turnovers our last game,” Shippensburg coach Dave Springer said. “We had 17 turnovers this time, and tonight, they came at a bad time.”
The game was tied 51-51 with 9:20 remaining when Shippensburg’s talent stepped aside for its youth.
Thanks almost exclusively to Raider turnovers, California (11-4, 2-0 PSAC West) scored 14 straight points and never looked back.
“We had spells where guys were getting tired and weren’t executing, and that’s from playing long minutes,” Springer said. “We started throwing soft passes, and when you do that against a team like California, they’ll get a hand on the ball and run away with it.”
Shippensburg freshman Justin Minter earned his first career double-double with 11 points and 10 rebounds while teammates Ryan Kraft (14 points) and Derrick Graff (10) also had double-digit scoring nights.
The Raiders, who have lost seven of their last eight, will try to rebound today when they travel to Clarion for a 3 p.m. matchup.
