By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
Basketball doesn’t get enough credit. It’s the football that takes all the crazy bounces, we’re told. But if you think basketball doesn’t bounce every which way, then you weren’t at the Connor Convocation Center Tuesday night.
You weren’t at the first-ever Great Midwest Athletic Conference Tournament game hosted by the Thomas More women’s basketball team. Especially in a game when the three-point shots weren’t falling, more like ricocheting all over the place.
By the end, Thomas More and visiting Hillsdale (Mich.) combined for just 10 of 50 from behind the arc. And that’s a big hit on a Saints team without a lot of size that depends on the long ball for a big part of their offense.
So four of 23 – and one for their first 13 three-point attempts– wasn’t going to get it done for a fourth-seeded TMU team that had already lost here this year to fifth-seeded Hillsdale.
So here they were, down 12-5 after the first quarter, to a Chargers team that looked bigger, stronger, more athletic. Now what?
TMU’s Rachel Martin: big game for the little guard. (NKyTribune photo)
Those three bandages that Saints’ senior Rachel Martin finished the game with – one on her right elbow, the other two on each knee – will give you a clue. “Finding another way,” Martin said of the hustle, hard work and scrappy play, is “what you have to do.”
And it’s what Thomas More did in toughing out a 50-41 win, the first postseason tourney victory as an NCAA Division II school. Tournament tough, you might call the Saints as you scan the three national championship banners from their time in the NAIA and NCAA Division III under Jeff Hans, the winningest college women’s basketball coach.
“Up and down,” Hans described the game of Martin, a dynamo of a 5-foot-4 guard playing her last game in this building. But not her last game. That will come this weekend at Ashland, where the Saints, as a first-year NCAA Division II team, are limited from going on to the national tournament.
“This is our March Madness,” said Hans, whose three national titles make it clear he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to the postseason. Just don’t ask him who his Saints will play Friday – or where. Getting through this game was plenty enough, especially after a start he could only describe as “passive.”
TMU Coach Jeff Hans after drying off from a water ball attack from his players. (NKyTribune photoo)
That is until “we started hitting shots,” said 6-foot sophomore Rylee Turner, whose strong second half of the season was epitomized by another double-double — 12 points and 11 rebounds — with two assists, two steals and two blocked shots.
The one play Hans cited for getting the Saints going was a drive by Turner, going with her off-hand to the left and hooking a nifty score while getting fouled. “She’s the one we need to be aggressive,” Hans said.
“Coach always tells us to shoot,” both Turner and Martin said separately. And after a while, “we were able to knock down some shots,” Turner said. Not a lot, but then they didn’t need to, as they limited Hillsdale to 14 of 52 (26.9 percent) from the field.
The difference came at the line and on the boards with TMU hitting 14 of 19 free throws to Hillsdale’s seven of 11 while outrebounding the bigger Chargers, 44-33, in a game with – doing the math here – 77 missed shots.
Which is where the bounces come in. You don’t have to be tall to chase down the bouncing ball from those 40 missed three-pointers. Which is where those Rachel Martin bandages come in.
“I usually finish with at least one,” she said, after a night getting knocked down and sending herself flying across the floor tracking down loose balls with the TMU trainer always ready for a quick pit stop repair. On the night, the Summit Country Day grad scored a team-high 13 points with two assists, three steals and even a blocked shot.
As for who the Saints will play, the GMAC tourney moves to the top remaining seed’s home site, which in this case is national No. 2 Ashland, for the final three games.
Thomas More, as the fourth seed, will face No. 1 Ashland, a team that beat TMU twice – 70-62 at TMU and 86-48 at Ashland – in a 5:30 Friday semifinal game.
“It doesn’t matter,” Hans said of the next game. What does? “To be able to grind one out in this conference at this time.”
SCORING SUMMARY
HILLSDALE 12 4 15 10—41
THOMAS MORE 5 16 11 18—50
HILLSDALE (17-12, 13-8 GMAC): Mills 3-9 1-6 0-1 7, Konkle 2-5 0-0 2-4 6, McDonald 3-10 1-6 2-2 9, McCormick 1-7 0-2 2-2 4, Pietryzk 2-7 2-6 0-0 6, Smith 1-3 0-1 0-0 2, Splain 2-5 2-4 1-2 7, Hohlbein 0-2 0-0 0-0 0, Pnacek 0-4 0-2 0-0 0; TOTALS: 14-52 5-27 7-11 41.
THOMAS MORE (18-11, 13-8 GMAC): Turner 3-8 0-2 6-7 12, Smith 2-7 1-2 0-0 5, Brenner 3-11 2-6 2-2 10, Jones 1-5 1-4 0-0 3, Leonard 0-1 0-1 0-0 0, M. Hunt 2-4 0-1 3-6 7, Vickers 0-2 0-2 0-0 0, C. Hunt 0-2 0-2 0-0 0, Tandy 0-1 0-0 0-0 0; TOTALS: 16-51 4-23 14-19 50.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.
