Box score, play-by-play
Link to Sunday's 6 p.m. Selection Show
ANCHORAGE -- At the start of the season, even the Seattle Pacific Falcons weren't picking themselves to win the Great Northwest Athletic Conference women's basketball championship.
As the schedule went along, they started to believe they could win it. And on Saturday night, in one of the toughest environments to play the equivalent of a conference title game, the Falcons went out and won it.
Daesha Henderson scored 21 points, including the go-ahead 3-pointer from deep in the left corner with 3:06 to play, and Seattle Pacific wrapped up sole possession of the GNAC crown with a 67-60 victory against 13th-ranked Alaska Anchorage.
For the 18th-ranked Falcons (24-3, 15-1 GNAC), who finished Saturday's game on a 21-7 scoring run to wipe out a seven-point deficit, it was their first outright title since the 2007-08 squad ran the table at 18-0. The current crew came up short just once, 54-40 at Western Washington on Jan. 23. From that point on, they finished the regular season on an 11-game winning streak.
“It's an awesome feeling to outright win the conference,” said senior guard Henderson (Snohomish, Wash./Snohomish HS), who pushed past 1,000 point for her career and now has 1,006, “because at the beginning, no one would have picked us to win it.”
In fact, it was Anchorage (23-4, 14-2 GNAC), which shared last year's title with SPU, that got the slight nod for the favorite's role in preseason polling by the conference coaches. Henderson saw that as just another challenge to be met as she and the Falcons found their wings.
“That's part of the excitement of having some new players every year,” she said.
For coach Julie van Beek, who now has three outright GNAC titles and one shared crown in her five years at the helm, this one definitely felt special.
“When you don't play a conference tournament, sometimes when you win (a title), it kind of goes unnoticed because you go right into regionals,” she said. “This was special because our kids got to win a big game with a championship feel to it.”
WHO AND WHERE? DON'T KNOW YET
The Falcons already had wrapped up the GNAC's automatic berth to the NCAA Division II tournament with Thursday night's 59-47 win at Alaska Fairbanks. Now, it's just a question of who the they play in the first round -- and where.
The Falcons came into the week ranked No. 2 in the West behind UC San Diego. But the Tritons lost to Humboldt State on Friday in the semifinals of the California Collegiate Athletic Association tournament, 82-78, and Humboldt went on to win the title and an automatic NCAA berth on Saturday, routing Chico State, 85-55.
Decisions about who winds up No. 1 in the West and who ultimately hosts the regional tournament are expected to be firmed up and announced on Sunday. Final seedings and first-round pairings, however, might not be set until Monday because of some make-up games scheduled for that night in the Pacific West Conference.
The selection show for the tournament can be seen live on ncaasports.com beginning at 6 p.m. PST.
While there was little doubt from the outset that Seattle Pacific would make the field, Henderson said it was around mid February when she and her teammates began to think they could make it as the conference champion after pulling out a 70-67 homecourt victory against Western Washington.
“The win against Western was huge. That was a big confidence builder,” Henderson said. “Since then, we've been playing really well as a team.”
After a slow, cold start on Saturday -- the Falcons didn't get onto the board until after nearly six minutes of the first half had elapsed when sophomore guard Nyesha Sims (Portland, Ore.) drained a 3-pointer from the right of the lane -- they quickly jumped into command, building a 16-4 lead. Anchorage eventually closed it to 21-17, but Seattle Pacific finished the half on a 9-2 tear capped by a 3-pointer from sophomore guard McKayla Gorman (Parker, Colo.) that beat the shot clock buzzer, to take a 30-19 lead into the locker room.
The Falcons then got the first four points of the second half, making it 34-19 with 19:01 left.
A SEAWOLF RUN, THEN ONE FOR FALCONS
The Seawolves were far from finished. They scored the next 13 points as part of a 20-2 run that took them from 15 down three up at 39-36 with 14:29 left -- a span of just 4½ minutes.
“They're a very good team, and good teams are going to go on big runs,” Henderson said. “They came out aggressive and ready to play.”
It was 53-46 for Alaska Anchorage at the 6:49 mark after Kelise Gourdin, who finished with a career-high 26 points, hit two free throws. Then it was the Falcons ripping off 11 points in a row. An 18-footer from the left corner by Sims, two free throws by Henderson (the second of which was point No. 1,000) and a top-of-the-key 3-pointer by junior forward Caitlyn Rohrbach (Edmonds, Wash./Meadowdale HS) tied it at 53-53 with 5:01 to go.
After nearly two minutes of neither team scoring, Henderson bombed in her shot from the left corner on a feed from sophomore guard Jordan Harazin (Colfax, Wash./Colfax HS) for a 56-53 lead at 3:06. Senior forward Megan Hoisington (Bremerton, Wash./Central Kitsap HS) hit 1 of 2 from the line at 2:38 to cap the 11-point scoring spree for a 57-53 edge.
Two more Gourdin free throws cut the lead to 57-55 with 2:15 left. But SPU ran off the next five points, started by heads-up play from Harazin when she raced under the hoop following a missed 3-pointer by Henderson, pulled the ball out of the air and laid it back in for a 59-55 lead at 1:30. Henderson hit two free throws at 1:07, and Maddie Maloney (Issaquah, Wash./Skyline HS) hit 1 of 2 with 41 seconds left to make it 62-55.
Anchorage never came closer than five after that, as the Falcons sank 8 of 10 from the line during the final 67 seconds.
“We let them go on the 13-0 run, and it took us out of our momentum,” van Beek said of Anchorage's early second-half surge. “With their crowd, I don't think we lost our composure, but one of the goals we set was intensity. And all of a sudden, their intensity was higher than ours. So we had to find a way to match that again."
The Falcons found it at the right time.
“This is a real sense of accomplishment and excitement,” van Beek said. “Having the injuries we had, we won a lot of games on grit and defense and determination.”
Henderson also handed out five assists and pulled down four rebounds. She was the only Falcon player in double figures. Rohrbach nine points and seven rebounds, and Sims also had nine points as SPU's reserves came up with 24 points and nine rebounds to Anchorage's seven points and five rebounds.
NCAA Women's Basketball
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Wells Fargo Sports Complex/Anchorage, Alaska
(No. 18) Seattle Pacific 67, (No. 13) Alaska Anchorage 60
SEATTLE PACIFIC (24-3, 15-1 GNAC)
Henderson 4-10 10-12 21; Rohrbach 3-7 1-2 9; Sims 4-6
0-0 9; Reich 3-4 2-2 8; Harazin 2-6 2-3 7; Gorman 2-5
0-0 6; Maloney 1-3 3-5 6; Hoisington 0-7 1-2 1; Murray
0-0 0-0 0. Totals 19-48 19-26 67.
ALASKA ANCHORAGE (23-4, 13-3 GNAC)
Gourdin 7-21 12-12 26; Johansson 5-13 2-2 12; Aden 3-7
0-0 7; Gruwell 2-5 0-0 6; Herrin 1-3 0-0 3; Miller 1-8 0-0
2; Nenbee 1-1 0-0 2; McBride 1-5 0-1 2; Stepovich 0-1 0-0
0; Collins 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 21-64 14-15 60.
Seattle Pacific..................... 30 37 - 67
Alaska Anchorage.............. 19 41 - 60
3-point goals--Seattle Pacific 10-22 (Henderson 3-7; Rohrbach
2-3; Gorman 2-4; Sims 1-2; Harazin 1-3; Maloney
1-2; Hoisington 0-1), Alaska Anchorage 4-16 (Gruwell 2-4;
Aden 1-3; Herrin 1-2; Stepovich 0-1; Miller 0-2;
Gourdin 0-4). Fouled out--Seattle Pacific-None, Alaska
Anchorage-Miller. Rebounds--Seattle Pacific 36 (Rohrbach 7),
Alaska Anchorage 38 (Gourdin 10). Assists--Seattle Pacific 16
(Henderson 5), Alaska Anchorage 11 (McBride 4). Total
fouls--Seattle Pacific 19, Alaska Anchorage 21. Technical fouls--Seattle
Pacific-None, Alaska Anchorage-None. A-580.
