D3hoops.com: Notables

A couple of the players on Messiah’s women’s basketball team came up with a way to express the team’s NCAA Tournament goals a little differently than Mike Miller’s previous teams had.

“Coach,” they said, “we want to continue being a team until the NCAA tells us that we can’t play any more.”

That meant getting back to the national semifinals, and Messiah is there for the first time since 2001 after winning four straight NCAA Tournament games, all at home, including a rally from 15 points down in the second half against Rochester in the Sweet 16, and a tight win over Tufts in the Elite 8.

Miller has had teams that have gotten close since the unlikely dream run in 2001, which went all the way to the national title game in Danbury, but none got over the hump until this season. The Falcons are 29-2 and ran the table on the way to the MAC Commonwealth title (earning Miller’s 400th career win in the championship win against Lebanon Valley), with their only losses coming to NCAA participants Kean and Baruch. They’ve done so with a revamped offense and Miller admitted his squad may not look as “refined” as in previous years. Yet Messiah must be doing something right. At last check, it ranked second in the NCAAs in field goal percentage, shooting 47 percent.

“We’re long and athletic,” Miller said. “We’re not the physical pounding kind of team that we had years ago. Everything we do on offense is new. New sets, new transitions, new everything. We tried to come up with an offense that can’t be scouted.”

At the heart of that is senior guard Nikki Lobach, the MAC Commonwealth Player of the Year and an All-American candidate, who has averaged 17.4 points on 56 percent shooting from the field this season. One rival coach described her as a similar kind of player to former Scranton All-American Taryn Mellody in how she can both post up and score off the dribble.

“She’s a real calming influence on the court,” Miller said. “She’s the most humble superstar we’ve had here since (D3hoops.com All-American Christina Vouriotis. She doesn’t want the limelight, but what she hates more than that is losing. She doesn’t want any plays run for her, but when it’s time to take over, she can, and she is very effective. She’s a great teammate.”

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Team defense is one of the key characteristics of this Messiah squad, as the Falcons rank 10th nationally in opponents’ points per game (50.7), with an emphasis on disrupting the offense by getting in the passing lanes. Scoringwise, no one else is averaging double figures, as the team concept comes into play. When
Lobach got two quick fouls against Tufts, it was a group effort that put the team ahead 22-13 at the break, on the way to a 55-49 win.

Miller credited his other seniors -- Amy Reed, Lauren Schurr and Gwen Avery, all starters who score between three and eight points per game, for taking control of the team when needed.

“A few weeks ago, they saw that one of our younger players was discouraged and they immediately met with her,” Miller said. “They’re about the team, the program and leaving a legacy.”

There are certain legacies passed on from that 2001 team, some of whose members, and their parents, were in the gym for the Elite Eight game. In fact, Miller did a double-take when he looked over to the sidelines and saw students from the class of 2001 watching, their faces painted in the same manner that they were for the run from seven years before. That team passed on its traditions, like chanting “No. 2, Dixon Ticonderoga (as in the pencil)” prior to a game, and forming a circle from which players are released, then return to, when they are introduced for their spot in the starting lineup (a routine borrowed from Vivian Stringer’s Rutgers squad). They also passed on the tradition of winning.

“It’s all about what the people before them did,” Miller said. “In 2001, we learned how to prepare for something like this.

“It feels like it’s all new to me, but now we know that it’s attainable.”