By Don Owen
NKyTribune reporter
One impressive winning streak is guaranteed to end Friday night when Thomas More College collides with unbeaten Amherst (Mass.) College in the NCAA Division III Final Four at Rochester, Minn.
Amherst (31-0) is the defending NCAA Division III national champion and owns a 64-game winning streak that dates back nearly two years. The Mammoths have not lost since March 19, 2016, when Thomas More eliminated them in the NCAA Division III Final Four en route to the national title.
The nation’s top defensive team, Amherst allows just 38.3 points per game. The Mammoths have limited opponents to 28 percent shooting from the field and are winning by an average margin of 22.5 points per game.
Sophomore guard Madeline Eck leads Amherst in scoring at 12 points per game. She also hauls in 5.2 rebounds per contest. Sophomore guard Hannah Fox is the other Amherst player scoring in double figures, netting 11.4 points per game. Junior forward Emma McCarthy is the team’s top rebounder at 7.1 boards per contest, and she also averages 9.5 points per game.
Junior guard Madison Temple, who was named the Great Lakes Region Player of the Year on Tuesday, leads Thomas More. Temple, who was also voted the Presidents’ Athletic Conference Player of the Year, averages 18.1 points and 7.0 rebounds per game. She finished first in the PAC in both free throw (.881) and 3-point (.462) percentages.
Temple recorded her 1,000th career point this season at the Hoop N’ Surf Classic in Hawaii. A week ago during a 72-57 win at Hope (Mich.) College, Temple scored nine of her game-high 25 points in the final quarter as the Saints earned a trip to the NCAA Division III Final Four.
Senior guard Abby Owings, a Simon Kenton High School graduate, is scoring 14.9 points per game. Owings also averages 3.1 assists and 2.5 steals per game, and she became Thomas More’s all-time leading scorer this season with more than 1,700 career points.
Thomas More is No. 2 nationally in scoring at 86.2 points per game. The Saints are first nationally in field-goal percentage at .490 and sixth in 3-pointers made per game (8.7).
Thomas More won back-to-back NCAA Division III national championships in 2015 and ’16. The NCAA later forced Thomas More to vacate all 33 wins from the 2014-15 season, including the national title, for using an ineligible player.
The other national semifinal game on Friday features Bowdoin (28-2) taking on unbeaten Wartburg (31-0). The national championship game is set for Saturday at 8:30 p.m.
Friday, March 16
NCAA Division III Final Four
(at Rochester, Minn.)
Thomas More (30-1) vs. Amherst (31-0), 6 p.m.
Bowdoin (28-2) vs. Wartburg (31-0), 8:30 p.m.