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Posting Up - Scoreboard - Top 25 - Features - Notables - Team of the Week - Live Audio |
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An in-depth look at Division III Posted Feb. 16, 1999 |
Notebooks Great Lakes Midwest Northeast Check out D3football.com |
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We see hundreds of press releases here at D3hoops.com, but I wanted to spotlight Jim Moore, SID at Chapman University. His weekly releases are consistently the most interesting. Rather than a dry recitation of facts, Moore injects some actual writing into the week's events. Enjoy. Sometimes lost in the finality of a box score are the moments that string together to produce the actual results -- the results that are thereafter so dispassionately published, analyzed, and preserved for posterity. It's the nature of both history and the detailed world of sports reporting that the cumulative product -- win/loss record, scoring average, career totals -- becomes the measuring stick. But it's the moments that make the event worth watching. Last Thursday, the Chapman and Cal Lutheran women's basketball teams renewed their special rivalry. The recent history of these two teams has been well-chronicled in these pages: the close friendship of the two head coaches, the shifting of dominance from Cal Lu to Chapman after a thrilling overtime Panther victory in 1995, the Regals snapping a six-game streak of Chapman victories with their win last February. This season, Cal Lutheran appeared to be on the verge on re-establishing superiority, with two consecutive wins coming into the game -- but you knew the Panthers wouldn't go down easily. Chapman came into the game mired in a four-game losing streak, suffering from an inability to put together offensive runs and a frightening propensity for defensive lapses. But you wouldn't have known that from watching the start of this game. The two teams played a well-crafted, see-saw first half that ended with the Panthers momentarily on top, 30-29, despite shooting less than thirty percent from the floor. Everything pointed to another half of tense action, and Chapman head coach Mary Hegarty knew her team's chances for the win depended on not falling behind by any substantial amount -- because the Regals are a team that feeds on offensive momentum and can throw ten or fifteen points at you in a heartbeat, if you give them the chance. Five minutes into the second half, Cal Lu had crept to a 37-34 lead and had the ball when a referee blew the whistle on the always-dicey block/charge play. The call went against the Panthers, a protest resulted in a technical foul on the Chapman bench, and the Regals got two free throws and the ball back. Then, as John Madden might put it: Boom. Cal Lu tore off on a 12-3 run in less than three minutes. With 12:58 left it was 49-36, and the one situation Hegarty feared most had come to pass. But nobody told the Panthers they were out of the game. Six minutes later, Chapman had gradually chipped away at the lead until it was 51-48, Cal Lu. There was no mistaking the fire and purposefulness of the Panther players, and with four minutes left and Cal Lutheran clinging to a 54-50 lead, Chapman produced a series of those moments that make a good game memorable. Four times Chapman had the ball, needing desperately to score. Four times the Panthers missed shots. But each time they did, they found a way to get the ball back on defense without further damage. Two ball-hawking steals. A blocked shot. A rebound of a missed free throw. And then with 52 seconds left, senior wing Lisa Nielsen hit a three-pointer -- her first in six games, and only her eighth of the year -- to cut the deficit to a single point. At 0:28, a foul sent Cal Lutheran's Valery Brady to the line, and she sank two clutch shots for a 56-53 lead, forcing Chapman to look for three more for the tie. As the Panthers worked the ball around the perimeter, the time clicked down on the clock until point guard Trista King found backup guard Michelle McMillen, all 5'2" and (maybe) 110 pounds of her, open on the wing. McMillen pulled the trigger on the biggest shot of her Chapman career, and it fell through with eight seconds left, forcing overtime, and creating an indelible moment of glory for McMillen and her teammates. The bad news here -- from the local angle, at least -- is that the Regals dominated the overtime, executing their plays flawlessly and scoring the first nine points of the extra period. Chapman appeared emotionally drained by the effort of getting back into the game, and lost the momentum it had fought to gain. Cal Lutheran went on to win 67-58, a final score that indicates a relatively uneventful game. Unless you were there to witness the moments that produced the result.
Men's Basketball The Santa Cruz loss was in the cards from the tipoff. The Panthers came out sluggish, perhaps overconfident in the fact that they had already beaten the Slugs twice this season. But the timeworn axiom of how hard it is to beat a team three times in a row proved itself valid once again, as the Slugs rode the strong effort of guard Beau Wilson to the win. Wilson hit seven of nine field goals and muscled his way to the free throw line ten times, making another seven there, for 21 points. A sure sign of Chapman's malaise was an assist-to-turnover ratio of nine to 20, a very bad sign for a team as passing-oriented as the Panthers try to be. Todd Canavan led Chapman with 16 points, and point guard Rich Johnson put on a late scoring flurry to finish with 13. In a statistical oddity for the 90s, Santa Cruz did not attempt a single three-pointer in the game. California Christian featured several athletes capable of jaw-dropping shooting range or leaping ability, but did not really have enough depth to counter Chapman's waves of disciplined players checking in and out of the game. While the Royals may have provided the highlight-reel plays (willowy guard Antwan Johnson had several athletic dunks, and Marcus Hollis hit a trio of treys from just this side of Barstow), Chapman won the game with sustained efficiency, shooting an even-paced 58 percent in the first half and 56 in the second, while Cal Christian shot an abysmal 18 percent in the second half as its effort grew ragged. The Panthers had five players in double figurs, and totaled 28 assists on 36 baskets - a marked contrast from their previous game. Tim Werdel made all five of his shots, including three threes, Derek Mitchell hit four treys on his way to 18 total points, and Canavan, whose ten-semester eligibility expired this week, had a 14-point, 14-rebound double-double in his final collegiate game. The Panthers coasted to victory Monday in a rematch with L.I.F.E. Bible, a team Chapman beat 108-48 in its season opener. This time the Panthers opened a 25-2 lead, let the Warriors creep back to 44-25 at the half, and then turned up the effort in their halfcourt zone defense in the second half to outscore L.I.F.E. 48-15 the rest of the way. Werdel had 17 points and eight rebounds (4-6 on threes) and Matt Poutsma hit four of five treys and totaled 17 as well. Mike Gartner had a strong effort inside with 16 points and eight rebounds, and Chapman had 25 assists in the game and a 40-22 edge in rebounding.
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