By Duane Cochran
For MountainEast.org
WHEELING, W.Va. — After missing the championship game of the Mountain East Conference Tournament for the first time in six years last season, the Glenville State women’s basketball team made sure Saturday its absence from the spotlight of the event’s big game would be short lived.
The sixth-seeded Pioneers shook off a slow start which saw them fall behind seventh-seeded West Virginia State by 13 in the opening quarter, rally to tie the game by halftime, and then explode on offense in the final two quarters en route to an impressive 87-73 victory here at WesBanco Arena.
The win avenged a pair of regular-season losses by the Pioneers to the Yellow Jackets and improved GSU to 19-11. State, which saw its modest four-game winning streak halted, finished the season at 18-13.
Glenville State will advance and face top-seeded and defending tournament champion Fairmont State on Sunday at 1 p.m.
“My word for today is proud,” said second-year GSU coach Emily Stoller. “We’ve had several bumps along the way, but just seeing it come together here is just unbelievable. I’m just so proud.
“Hats off to State. They’ve had an incredible season. We knew it was going to be a dogfight coming in and our girls stepped up to the plate and met the match.”
Once Glenville State got even with the Yellow Jackets it turned up its intensity on offense and quickly took control of the game for good early in the third quarter. The Pioneers outscored State, 29-20, in the third and shot 55 percent from the field in the quarter, including a 5-of-11 showing from behind the three-point arc.
“Whenever we got in that hole early I just kept saying ‘stay calm, stay calm,’” said GSU freshman guard Ashlyn Riley, who finished with a game-high 26 points, 21 of which came in the second half. “We knew they were going to press us and try to get us flustered a little bit. The main thing we talked about was staying calm in the storm and continuing to play our game because we were confident we could turn things around.”
Riley canned a career-high six 3-pointers in the victory. Ironically, the last Pioneers player to hit six treys in an MEC Tournament game was her current head coach.
Glenville State ended up outscoring State, 53-39, in the second half. The Yellow Jackets, who connected on 8 of 18 3-pointers in the first 20 minutes, were held to just a 3-of-17 showing in the final two quarters.
“We just ran out of gas today,” West Virginia State coach Charles Marshall said. “I told our players I felt like for us to get back to the championship game it was going to take more mental toughness than physical toughness and we just got mentally fatigued. That’s ultimately what happened today.”
Yellow Jackets senior guard ZZ Russell said her team, which was playing its third game in four days, had the adrenaline early, but did get mentally fatigued and didn’t do a good job of overcoming it.
“I don’t really think Glenville (State) did anything special defensively,” Russell said. “I mean, we play similar styles so we knew what they were going to do.
“We had the adrenaline in the first half, but as the game goes on there is some mental fatigue that sets in and you just have to fight to get yourself over the hump and deal with that. We struggled to do that today and that’s frustrating because in the second half we were not doing things that we were supposed to be doing that we were just doing 10 minutes ago.”
Baylee Goins and Russell led State with 13 and 12 points, respectively. Hallie Bailey chipped in nine points and a team-high eight rebounds.
Riley was joined in double figures for the Pioneers by Tynasia Bunting, who finished with 16 points and seven rebounds, and Nwando Okigbo, who had 14 points and eight boards. GSU’s Stevi Yancy dished out a game-high 10 assists in the win — tied for the third-most assists in an MEC Tournament game.
Glenville State has won a record five MEC Tournament titles; Fairmont State has won one. The Pioneers and Falcons have never met in a MEC Tournament title game. FSU swept the season series between the two schools.