Horizon League

#HLWBB Championship Semifinal Roundup

March 09

Rachel White

Check out how @IUPUILadyJags and @gbphoenixwbb advanced to Tuesday's #HLWBB championship!#REACHtheHORIZON pic.twitter.com/Zzstb4BONI

— Horizon League (@HorizonLeague) March 9, 2020

By David Song
Sports Capital Journalism Program, IUPUI
Bolstered by its defense, the top-seeded IUPUI Jaguars overcame a slow start and eliminated sixth-seeded Cleveland State, 71-54, in a semifinal of the Horizon League Women’s Basketball Championship on Monday afternoon at Indiana Farmers Coliseum.

IUPUI (23-8) advanced to its first Horizon League title game and the second conference final in four seasons. The Jaguars reached the 2017 Summit League final.

Destiny Perkins, a redshirt sophomore guard from nearby Lawrence North High School, led the Jaguars with 15 points on 4-for-6 shooting. Two-time League Player of the Year Macee Williams scored 12 of her 14 points in the second half and had a game-high total of 11 rebounds.

Cleveland State (21-12) was held to 36.4% shooting, the second-lowest percentage IUPUI allowed against a conference opponent this season. The Vikings were led by junior guard Mariah White, the League Defensive Player of the Year, who notched 16 points on 6-of-13 shooting before she fouled out with 1:39 to play. Senior guard Mariah Miller was held to 11 points, six beneath her average, on 4-of-16 shooting.

IUPUI earned a bye to the semifinal with its first-place finish. Jaguar coach Austin Parkinson described how Cleveland State’s tournament victories last Tuesday and Thursday contributed to its fast start on Monday. “They have that kind of game feel,” Parkinson said of the Vikings. “I don’t think it was rust, I just think [it was about] being in the game and understanding that rhythm of things. But we settled down in the second quarter.”

Cleveland State opened the game with force, doing its best to limit the Jaguars’ scoring with ferocious defense. Williams drew triple teams in the post and could not score in the opening frame. Miller, a first-team All-League guard, had a basket and 3-point shot within a span of 1:40 midway through the first quarter.

Williams managed to adjust her approach, contributing three of her team-high five assists in the first quarter.
“I don’t need to be the top scorer of every game, or any game,” Williams explained. “If I can’t be the top scorer, I just feel like I need to work on assists, rebounds or even just being a big help on defense.”

Entering the second quarter down 16-15, IUPUI’s defense – which held opponents to a conference-low average of 57.24 points -- changed the course of the game. The Vikings scored just four points on 2-of-15 shooting and were unable to find rhythm on offense as Miller and White combined for just one basket in 10 attempts. Perkins, who finished the first half with nine points, gave the Jaguars a boost with her feisty two-way play as they went into halftime up 31-20.

“I thought Destiny was awesome,” Parkinson said. “She had three steals. She was creating havoc, she was flying around. That amps up the energy for everybody else. [Destiny’s] been in double figures I think the last three games, but a lot of it stems from the fact that she’s playing so hard on the defensive side of things. When she plays like that our offense follows, and to have that punch off the bench tonight was huge.”

The Vikings mounted a spirited comeback attempt in the third frame. White led the surge with 10 points on 3-of-3 shooting. Senior guard Jade Ely added seven more, going 3-for-4 from the field.

But Williams and second-team All-League guard Holly Hoopingarner got hot at the same time. With nine points from Williams and seven from Hoopingarner, the Jaguars maintained a 12-point lead going into the fourth quarter.

Struggling to compete with IUPUI’s depth, Cleveland State ran into serious foul trouble in the final period. Senior guard Jade Ely, who scored 11 points, fouled out with 4:49 to play and the Vikings within eight points. When White was called for her fifth foul, the deficit was 11 with 1:39 to play.

The Jaguars rode their depth to the finish line. Hoopingarner ended up with 13 points, while redshirt sophomore Rachel McLimore and freshman guard Natalie Andersen added 10 and nine, respectively.

Despite the big win, Parkinson knows that his team needs more work to be ready for the championship final. “In the third quarter, we got back to a bad habit that we’ve had in some of our losses,” he said. “We thought we were a shot-blocking team. We’re last in the league in blocks. That’s no secret. So in the fourth quarter, we didn’t [foul] quite as much, so I thought that was great.”

Williams stressed the importance of preparation for tomorrow’s final. “[We just need] to take it one possession at a time,” she said. “After today, we’re just going to go back to the hotel, rest up, get the treatment we need. Whoever we’re playing, [we’ll be] coming in confident and knowing we can do this if we work as a team.”
  

By Jared McMurry

Sports Capital Journalism Program, IUPUI

Frankie Wurtz couldn’t bear the thought of crying. Soon she would be in the locker room following Green Bay’s semifinal game against Northern Kentucky in the Horizon League Women’s Basketball Championship. 

So with the No. 2 seeded Phoenix enduring a four-minute scoring drought and trailing by a point, the senior guard twice took the game into her own hands. Her two baskets in the last 19 seconds – including the decisive layup with three seconds to play -- lifted Green Bay to the championship game with a 50-49 win over the No. 4 Norse at Indiana Farmers Coliseum on Monday afternoon.

“I was thinking we are not losing this game,” Wurtz said. “Honestly Northern Kentucky made a really good run. They’re a tough team. I do have confidence in myself in those situations. Especially as a senior I feel like that’s my role as a leader to believe in myself and everybody else, too.”

Green Bay (19-12), a 16-time Horizon League champion, will face regular-season champion IUPUI for the title at 12 p.m. on Tuesday. IUPUI won at Green Bay 54-42 on Jan. 17, before the Phoenix returned the favor with a 61-58 win at IUPUI on Feb. 23. Northern Kentucky (20-12) had the most victories in the program’s Division I era. 

Northern Kentucky held Green Bay scoreless for 4:09, erasing a 10-point deficit to take a 47-46 lead on a 3-point play from Ally Niece with 36 seconds left.

Niece, a 5-8 sophomore, led all scorers with 20 points, but the second-team All-League selection’s heroics weren’t enough. Wurtz gave the Phoenix the lead with 19 seconds left. Freshman guard Ivy Turner put the Norse ahead by making a jumper in the lane with six seconds left. After a timeout, Wurtz drove the left baseline for the game-winning basket.

“At this point it doesn’t really make a difference how you do it,” Green Bay coach Kevin Borseth said. “It’s a win and move on. Northern Kentucky played us right to the bitter end and we expected nothing less.”

Wurtz, who was selected to the All-League First Team, led the Phoenix with 17 points, while junior guard Caitlyn Hibner added 10. Green Bay connected on just 20 of 57 shots, or 35%. The Phoenix won for just the seventh time in the 18 games that they scored fewer than 70 points.

Borseth credits Northern Kentucky defense more than a bad shooting performance.

“I don’t know if we struggled to shoot at the end so much,” he said. “Northern Kentucky is pretty good. They’re quality, and you look at their record the last 14 games … and they’ve been pounding teams.”

While both teams have prided themselves on defense, with Green Bay and Northern Kentucky ranked second and third respectively in defensive average in the Horizon League, rebounding proved to be key for the Phoenix.

“They’re strong so rebounding is difficult,” Green Bay junior guard Caitlyn Hibner said. “They do a good job of keeping you off the glass, but then also crashing the glass offensively, so that was a big key for us was to win the rebounding battle.”

Green Bay won the rebounding advantage 39-36, in contrast to a 40-29 edge for the Norse in a 63-43 Northern Kentucky win over the Phoenix on Feb. 1.

Molly Glick, a second-team All-League selection, added 10 points for the Norse.

That win extended the winning streak to seven games for the Phoenix, who started the season by losing seven of their first 12 games as injuries and illnesses complicated the start of their season.

“We finished one game with four players and took a road trip with six,” Borseth said. “We were really banged up at the beginning. So when we got everybody back, we got better, like we should have.”

Only four Phoenix players have played in all 31 games this season, while six players have missed at least five games.

Green Bay is trying to secure its 17th league tournament championship and NCAA tournament automatic berth in 24 appearances, but their first since 2018 after losing to Wright State 55-52 in the championship game last season.

Borseth puts no weight though in past successes, as each team is different.

“All the success our program has had I merely tell our players these aren’t yours,” he said. “The first thing I tell them on day one is ‘you see this gym and all the banners, these are not yours.’ These are the ghosts of the past and the ones that put those up there. And you might have some pressure to put another one up there, but at the end of the day there’s a level of expectation from our players, there’s a level of expectation from our staff, a level of expectation from our fans, and quite frankly there’s a level of expectation from our opponents.”

The 2019-2020 Phoenix team will be ready to challenge the Jaguars and two-time Horizon League Player of the Year Macee Williams.

“We have confidence in our abilities,” Borseth said. “Obviously IUPUI won the league and they’re pretty good. And we aren’t bad either. I think our program is as good as anybody, but every given night if you have to go out and you have to bring it and tomorrow night against IUPUI we are going to have to bring it again."