Final Stats
Postgame:
Notre Dame |
Charleston
CHARLESTON, W.Va. – The third time was indeed a charm for Notre Dame College here Saturday afternoon in the quarterfinal round of the Mountain East Conference Basketball Tournament at the Charleston Civic Center.
The sixth-seeded Falcons used a 25-4 run over the course of a 9:24 span in the second half to wipe out a nine-point deficit and record their third win of the season over third-seeded Charleston, 65-55.
The victory improved Notre Dame to 19-11 on the year and sets up a meeting with second-seeded Shepherd University (21-8) in the tournament semifinals Saturday at 2:15 p.m. The Rams eliminated seventh-seeded Glenville in Thursday's first quarterfinal round game, 100-91.
“Obviously this game was a tale of two halves for us,” said Notre Dame coach Katie Hine. “The first half was a combination of two things for us. We couldn't figure out how to score and when we did get good looks they weren't going in.
“In the second half we had to go to the drawing board and adjust some things mainly to open these two (Martha Nagbe and Lauren Langenderfer) up and to take advantage of some holes in their 1-3-1 defense. If they weren't going to adjust their defense we had to adjust our offense.”
The adjustments worked and allowed Notre Dame to both press defensively and get into its up-and-down the court attack on offense which in turn changed the game.
“I thought we did a tremendous job in the first half of playing very hard and playing with a lot of energy and effort,” said UC coach Adam Collins, whose squad fell to 22-7 with the loss. “That was something we lacked in our first two meetings with them.
“In the second half they (Notre Dame) picked up their energy and we didn't push back enough. We shot a higher percentage than they did, we made more field goals than they did and we out-rebounded them so the only two different categories there is they shot a lot more free throws than we did and we turned the ball over 23 times (20 of which came in the second half). That's a testament to how hard they played. They got in positions to get fouled and they were very active with their press.”
Charleston led 30-19 at the half and held a 38-29 advantage with 14:09remaining when Notre Dame caught fire. Led by junior guards Langenderfer and Nagbe, who finished with 15 and 14 points respectively in the win, the Falcons exploded on their game-changing 25-4 run which turned their nine-point deficit into a 54-42 lead with 4:42 to play.
“They were trying to slow the game down, but once we started hitting some shots it allowed us to get into our press, turn up our defensive pressure and get going,” said Langenderfer, who added a game-high 11 rebounds to post her first double-double performance of the season. “We like to play uptempo. We weren't doing that in the first half. The second half was a different story.”
Nagbe, the conference's player of the year who was held scoreless in the game until the 16:49 mark of the second half, agrees.
“There was one play there around when that run started that we made on defense which sparked us,” said Nagbe. “Usually that's all it takes to get us going.
“It was a bit frustrating for me in the first half. Being named the player of the year I felt like I needed to come out and play well, but I wasn't hitting shots so I just tried to do like coach tells me to do when I'm not hitting shots and that's just to keep playing hard on defense. It worked.”
Nagbe scored 12 of her 14 points in the game's last 13 minutes.
Charleston turned the basketball over nine times in a span of just 6:26during the stretch when the Falcons took control of the contest.
“They did a good job of speeding the game up in the second half and it just changed the whole flow of it,” said Charleston sophomore forward Monet Saunders, who finished with six points and four rebounds. “That led to us having a lot of turnovers. Instead of staying calm and continuing to play our game we felt like we had to score in a hurry in the second half.”
The Falcons also got 13 points from sophomore forward Kelsey Miller in the victory, eight points from junior guard Jessica Garcia and seven points from senior forward Molly Ritz.
Charleston was led by junior center Kiara Johnson's 16 points and seven rebounds. The Golden Eagles also got 10 points and six boards from junior guard Deja Gibson and nine points from senior guard LeAnne Ross.