Sunday, November 30, 2008 10:44 PM CST
EIU women fall just short in title game
By JG/T-C staff
sports@jg-tc.com
CINCINNATI -- With her team leading by three points, Cincinnati’s Shelly Bellman fired a 25-footer just to beat the 30-second shot clock.
When the 3-pointer swished through the net with 19 seconds left, the Bearcats had beaten Eastern Illinois.
Host Cincinnati pulled out Sunday’s 52-47 in the championship game of the Courtyard Marriott Florence Thanksgiving Classic.
The game matched two teams that had each won their Friday and Saturday games of the tourney.
Ellen Canale scored 15 points and registered four assists to lead Eastern while Rachel Galligan added 12 points and five rebounds.
Bellman connected on four of her team’s nine 3-pointers and finished with a game-high 16 points. Half of the Bearcats’ 18 field goals were scored from long range. Eastern made five 3s.
Each of Cincinnati’s last three field goals was a 3-pointer, with Bellman connecting on the final two. Her clutch, game-deciding shot ended a four and a half minute scoring drought. During that span EIU got a pair of field goals from Galligan, the second coming with 1:19 remaining, making it a 48-45 game.
The Panthers committed a foul on the subsequent UC possession and the Bearcats had the ball on their end of the floor for nearly a minute. After calling a timeout with eight seconds remaining on the shot clock, the ball eventually came to Bellman on the left wing. Her contested heave from the left wing was a clean swish.
“Sometimes you get breaks, sometimes you don’t,” EIU coach Brady Sallee said. “The most important thing for us is the fact that we had a game plan and I thought we executed it very well both offensively and defensively. We’re going to live with our execution; shots are going to in and shots aren’t. We drew some stuff up and got some really good looks when we needed them. Probably too many turnovers to beat a Big East team, but we were right in the game and had our chances. Shelly Bellman hit a big shot.”
Besides connecting on 5-of-10 from the field, including a 3-pointer, Canale also collected four rebounds and four assists. She limited Cincinnati’s leading scorer, Kahla Roudebush (a former high school teammate of Kluempers), to 11 points on 4-of-13 shooting. The Panthers also held Jill Stephens, UC’s second-leading scorer, without a field goal attempt.
Eastern led for the first nine minutes of the game and by as many as seven during that span. However, Cincinnati responded to the seven-point deficit with an 11-2 run. The Panthers regained the advantage on a 3-pointer by Ashley Thomas, but did not score again from the field until Galligan connected on a layup in the final seconds of the half. The Bearcats reeled off 10 unanswered points during the EIU drought to take a five-point lead to the locker room.
It was those five points that proved to be the difference in the game after the two teams played to an even 25-25 draw during the final 20 minutes.
Eastern used a 10-3 run in the second half to take its final lead of the game at 36-35 with 11:24 remaining. But UC answered with a basket on the other end of the floor, a field goal that ignited a 13-5 spurt. It remained a two-possession game until Galligan scored with 1:19 left.
“I can’t say enough about our defense,” Cincinnati coach J. Kelley Hall said. “Eastern Illinois is going to be an NCAA team. I believe they will win their league and go on to win their tournament. Our defense did a great job of taking the things that they wanted to do.”
En route to finishing as the runner-up of the tournament, all 14 Panthers saw action over the course of the three games. Galligan scored in double-figures in every contest.
Eastern returns to action Thursday when it opens Ohio Valley Conference play against Tennessee State. Tipoff at Lantz Arena is slated for 5:30 p.m.
Add your comments
Not already registered?
Then click Here.
Comment policy:
JG-TC.com encourages readers to engage in civil conversation with their neighbors. Comments that are submitted are not posted to the site immediately. They go into a queue to be moderated and may take several hours to be reviewed. Comments posted on Saturday may not be reviewed until Sunday afternoon.
In order to keep the page a set width, long lines (mostly long links) will be chopped. Try putting spaces in your links or consider using tinyurl.com to make a smaller link that you can include.
We will never edit or alter your comments, but we do reserve the right to remove comments that violate our code of conduct.
No comment may contain:
* Potentially libelous statements; such as accusing somebody of a crime, defamation of character, or statements that can harm somebody's reputation.
* Obscene, explicit, or racist language.
* Personal attacks, insults, threats, harassment or inciting violence.
* Commercial product promotions.
If you have any questions, please contact our moderator.
|
|
|
