Salem is known as the “Championship City” in many Division III athletics events. As such, Salem hosted one of many of those championship events in the Cregger Center. The Division III women’s basketball national semifinals and finals were held on March 19 and 21 respectively. The four teams playing in the tournament were New York University (who happened to be the returning champions), the University of Scranton, Denison University, and the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh.
The first semifinal game tipped off at 5 p.m. with Denison and Oshkosh playing. Denison jumped out to quite an early lead. The action was mainly split between guard Abby Cooch (a Virginia native) and center Anelly Mad-toingué leading the way. At 6-foot-3, Mad-toingué towered over her opponents in the paint and on the defensive side. She had 10 points, eight rebounds, and two blocks in 20 minutes of playing time. The block number is pretty impressive considering even having one blocked shot in a game does not happen often. Cooch played 34 minutes of the game and had 13 points. Cooch was difficult to defend, giving her quick pace and high decision-making IQ. Her ability to change pace when necessary helped the team continue to the national championship match. While Oshkosh made a valiant effort in the game, their lack of scoring early in the game ultimately led to their defeat in the Final Four. The final score of that game was 82-61.
NYU and Scranton was more of a defensive game at first. Keeping in mind that NYU were the defending national champions, this makes sense because they wanted to keep the trophies rolling. They displayed this early by being the first to score, but Scranton quickly had a response and got a basket of their own. Scranton continued their defensive efforts to keep NYU at bay. Meghan Lamanna played all 40 minutes of the game and scored 18 points, half of which were three-pointers. From NYU, Caroline Peper, who played last season when NYU won the championship in the Cregger Center, did not let Lamanna get as many shots as she wanted. She played for 38 minutes and scored 19 points. Unfortunately, Peper and the rest of the NYU defense could not hold off Scranton, resulting in a Scranton victory. An interesting contributing factor for the night game was the atmosphere in Cregger. The Scranton men’s lacrosse team had been travelling for tournaments throughout the week, and between games happened to stop to see the Final Four matchup. This was a major factor in Scranton’s close win over NYU. A little bit of support can go a long way in the sports world.
The final matchup would be set for Saturday with Scranton and Denison playing. While Scranton’s lacrosse team was not there to cheer the Royals to a potential championship, both teams had quite a crowd and most of the Cregger Center was full. The game quickly displayed good defense on both sides including a steal from Scranton’s Kaeli Romanowski and six rebounds from Mad-toingué just in the first quarter. A buzzer beater shot at the end of the first quarter helped Scranton close the gap between the teams, however both teams struggled offensively in the second quarter. Only nine points were scored between both teams in the second quarter, eight of them being from Denison with the help of Abby Cooch. One of my fellow pep band members commented that the score might reflect that of a football game rather than a basketball game because of the good defense and lack of scoring.
This changed after both teams spent some time in the locker room for halftime. After the break, Scranton went on one of their “signature runs,” putting up nine quick points and taking the lead. Denison then responded with their own scoring drive. The tradeoff of scoring drives seemed to be the story of the third quarter, and another Scranton buzzer beater three helped them take the lead going into the final 10 minutes. Again, the defense shined early in the fourth quarter, but Scranton’s exhaustion from playing aggressively for 35-plus minutes got to them. Denison managed to go on a 14-0 scoring run late in the game and Scranton could not catch up. The final score was 55-41 in Denison’s favor. Although only one team could win it all in Salem last weekend, all the teams went to extraordinary odds this year and played an excellent tournament.
Lauren Price
Staff Reporter
