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Posted March 13, 2003

This spring break is no vacation

St. Norbert coach Connie Tilley doesn’t strike us as the type that gets mad too often, but she was a little peeved after her team lost its conference opener to Ripon on Jan. 9.

There was some residual frustration left over from the team’s struggles to fly home a few days before, after playing three games in three nights in the Bahamas. There was the fact that outside the Green Knights' locker room the Ripon players were banging doors and yelling in celebration of their surprising win. Everything kind of boiled over at that point.

Stacy Ritter is the only one of Connie Tilley's Green Knights averaging in double figures.

“I told our kids that our vacation was over,” Tilley said earlier this week, “and I told them we weren’t going to lose the rest of the season.”

Her players, who joked the next day that their coach went “psycho” on them responded, starting the next day in practice. And guess what? They haven’t lost a game since.

St. Norbert heads into its sectional semifinal with Washington University this Friday at Hardin-Simmons with a 23-4 record and a 19-game winning streak. The Green Knights pulled off perhaps the biggest upset of the NCAA Tournament so far by winning at No. 6 ranked, MIAC champion Carleton, 60-47 in front of a hostile, near-capacity crowd.

“Not to take anything at all away from Carleton, but I just had a feeling from the opening tip that we were going to win the game,” said Tilley, now in her 26th season as head coach (she also coaches golf and has previously coached volleyball and softball). “I think the underdog role is everything that it’s made out to be. We thrived in it. In that environment, you can go in the tank, but instead it motivated us. Our kids loved the booing and everything. We weren’t intimidated and we played great."

When we needed a basket we got it. When we needed a rebound, we got it. When we needed a stop, we got it. We played our best defense of the year.”

The Green Knights got stops almost every time down the floor, holding Carleton to 22% shooting and its lowest point total in three years. This year's defense is part of a massive overhaul after a 13-10 season in 2001-02 in which they were still impressive, allowing 58.5 points per game. "We changed everything we did," Tilley said.

St. Norbert has held four of its last five opponents below 50 points and 10 of its last 11 below 60 points. The lone exception was in the Midwest Conference Championship game, in which they went to double overtime before edging Lake Forest, 77-75.

“That was probably the best game I’ve ever been involved in,” said Tilley, who picked up her 400th career basketball win in that game and has coached long enough to remember going up against Wash U. coach Nancy Fahey when the latter played at Wisconsin nearly 23 years ago. “We were down seven with 13 minutes left, but we stuck with it. That made me think it was meant to be. We never expected to get this far, but this is a special group.”

The Green Knights are led by senior guard Stacy Ritter, who won league player of the year honors, despite averaging only 11.4 points per game. Senior center Susan Schramka (51% from the field) and junior guard Kelly Crombach (89% from the foul line) have relieved some of Ritter’s load, as has a bench that has outscored the opposition's bench in every game during the streak. Sophomore forward Rachael Dombrowski is one who provides instant offense, averaging 7.1 points per game in 15 minute stints. She had 23 points, including the game-winning 3-pointer, in the championship win.

This is the fourth Sweet 16 trip for the Green Knights and the first since 1988. St. Norbert qualified for the Final Four in the 1985 but lost to New Rochelle, 61-59 in the semifinals on a halfcourt shot in the final seconds. Now might be the best chance to get back.

“We can look at this as being really happy where we are,” Tilley said, “or we can look at it like we’re two games away from the Final Four. We’re going to be the little school from Wisconsin taking on the big team. We’ll show up, play hard, and just let things happen.”

Wilmington hopes Woodruff stays perfect
Basketball has taught Wilmington senior guard Megan Woodruff that the perfection she seeks isn’t always attainable.

Almost perfect though has been plenty good enough for Woodruff and the Quakers, who enter a sectional semifinal with Hope on Friday with a 26-2 record and a 22-game winning streak. Woodruff ranks second in the Ohio Athletic Conference in scoring (17.8 ppg) behind teammate Tara Rausch and second in the nation in assists at better than seven per game. She also shoots free throws at an 89% clip and hit on 39% of her 3-point attempts.

It is in other endeavors that Woodruff has achieved perfection. Last week she was named the Verizon Academic All-America of the Year, an honor given to the top student athlete in Division II and III, as well as the NAIA. Woodruff, who has never received less than an A in any class dating back to kindergarten, has a 4.0 GPA as an athletic training major and hopes to pursue a career as a personal trainer or strength and conditioning coach.

“I’m kind of a perfectionist,” Woodruff said with a laugh, shortly before leaving for Eau Claire, Wis.

A good example of her determination came over the summer when the team made a trip to Ireland. Two weeks prior to that Woodruff, along with teammate Emily Cummins, ran in a local marathon, completing the course in 4 hours, 37 minutes. Yet there she was ready to practice two days later. After a few minutes, head coach Jerry Scheve wisely told her to get some rest.

“She’s the hardest working player I’ve ever had,” said Scheve, now in his 13th season. “She’s dedicated 365 days a year. She is a great 3-point shooter and penetrator, and she’s the smartest defender we have. She has worked really hard at improving her strength and quickness recently. That’s made her more explosive and an even better defender.”

Woodruff’s example of determination has spread to her teammates, who rank among the nation’s leaders in field goal percentage (49.1%), scoring (81.5 points per game), rebounding margin (plus-16 per game) and who led the OAC in lowest opponents' field goal and 3-point percentage allowed. Sophomore forward Siobhan Zerilla averages 13 rebounds per game, despite only standing 5-foot-8. Cummins, who shot 30% on 3-pointers last season, had a string earlier this season in which she made 10 in a row.

Hope (whose last loss came against Wilmington in the 2002 Sweet 16) and Eau Claire may both be undefeated against Division III opponents this season, but don’t count out the Quakers in this bracket, who want this season to have a perfect ending.

Kretzing hopes history repeats at Messiah
Messiah senior point guard Amie Kretzing refers to the double-overtime sectional semifinal win over Marymount two years ago as her favorite athletic moment, even though she admits that the key moments are nothing but a blur.

“I get goose bumps just thinking about it,” said Kretzing, referring to Melissa Ehst’s 25-foot game tying 3-pointer in the final seconds of regulation in a game that Messiah won 93-82 en route to a spot in the national championship game against Washington University. “It was just incredible. For sports, that’s as big a memory as I have.”

The Falcons (27-2 and winners of 17 in a row) will try to make more pleasant memories this weekend when they face Marymount again in another sectional semifinal in Rochester, N.Y. There are a few holdovers from that previous game — players that had key roles, and Marymount coach Bill Finney will do well to remember one of the better big-game players in the eastern part of the country.

Kretzing was an All-MAC Commonwealth selection this season and had her best game in her most recent one, a win over Johns Hopkins in the second round in which she scored 24 of her game-high 27 points in the second half. Senior forward Christina Vouriotis may be one of the best players in the country, but Kretzing can also hurt opponents in many ways. Her willingness to both shoot from the outside (42% from 3-point range) and take the ball to the basket gets her plenty of points. She is near-automatic at the foul line, where she has been ranked among the nation’s best free throw shooters throughout her career, and is hitting them at 85% this season. She says she works on her foul shooting in practice as a stress release.

“It’s been somewhat of a streaky season for me, kind of a roller coaster,” Kretzing said. “Christina always puts up solid numbers. When she is off, there is always someone to step up for her.”

This sounds similar to the Messiah team that we profiled two seasons ago and in fact the Falcons still chant “No. 2, Dixon Ticonderoga” before every game and have a Bible verse written on their sneakers (this year’s is Romans 15:5-6 which speaks of endurance and unity).

The one area that the Falcons may be even better in is their defense. The Falcons have held 10 of their last 14 opponents to less than 55 points and teams are shooting only 34% from the field against them. That may be enough to give seniors Kretzing, Vouriotis, and Heidi Marks a nice sendoff at the Final 4.

“I think I’m alright (with basketball coming to an end sometime soon),” said Kretzing, an elementary education major. “I’ll miss it, but I know that there’s a lot more in store for me in my life.”

Jones keeping up in Little East
Southern Maine freshman forward Tiffany Jones has frequently raised the bar with each game she has played this season. The 11 points she scored off the bench in her collegiate debut were only the beginning in a season she capped by winning Little East Rookie of the Year honors and providing worthy competition to Eastern Connecticut All-American Allison Coleman for player of the year recognition.

It took Jones four games to break into the starting lineup, rare for a freshman to get that kind of a look at a powerhouse program such as Southern Maine (26-3), which faces Bowdoin in a rematch of a double-overtime loss earlier this season in a sectional semifinal on Friday. That meeting was Jones’ last as a reserve and she showed why she deserved to be a starter with 33 points, including the game-tying basket with less than a second to play in the first overtime.

“When I first came here, I didn’t really know what to expect,” said Jones, who hails from Skowhegan, Maine. “As I played more, they welcomed my style, which is definitely up tempo. I get a lot of my points playing transition basketball. On rebounds, we’ll throw the ball long and usually I end up chasing it down.”

Jones’ style has given opponents plenty of problems this season. Teams that were focusing on the other two top scorers- junior Meg Cressler and senior Jess Libby, learned quickly that this freshman was one to be reckoned with. Besides the 33 points against Bowdoin, she hit the winning free throw with a second remaining to give the Huskies a win over Colby, scored 27 of her 30 points in the second half in a triumph over Colby, and put forth a Michael Jordan-like effort, notching 40 points despite playing with the flu in a win against Plymouth State, which had beaten the Huskies earlier in the season.

“It’s been a great experience to play with and against such a lot of talent,” Jones said. “Anything that happens the rest of my career will be a great experience. I just want to make sure I stay healthy.”

Notes for Around the Nation are compiled with the help of sports information directors across the country. If you have suggestions or information for this column, please send it to mark@d3hoops.com.

Previous columns
2007-08 columns
March 6: Faith restored
Feb. 27: John Jay, Cinderella
Feb. 21: No safety net
Feb. 14: Ursinus better enough
Feb. 8: Hope-TMC on collision course
Jan. 31: Plattsburgh's big shot
Jan. 24: UMD answers call
Jan. 18: Like Bosko, like son
Jan. 11: Keystone stakes
Dec. 13: Unstoppable
Dec. 7: UWW aiming deeper
Nov. 30: Coach's shadow lingers
Nov. 15: Strong duo
2006-07 columns
2005-06 columns
2004-05 columns
2003-04 columns
2002-03 columns
2001-02 columns

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