The women’s NCAA basketball tournament was just a half-hour old, and already my bracket was flashing before my eyes. Southeast Missouri State was ahead of Oklahoma 22-14. SeMo ahead of the Big O? The Ohio Valley champ was neutralizing one of the best players in the country, Courtney Paris.
Luckily there was 5-4 freshman point guard Jenna Plumley, playing in her first NCAA tournament game. She was hitting threes at will, finishing with 20 points and seven assists to help power the Big 12 champ and 3-seed past 14-seed SeMo, 74-60. The game was closer than the 14-point margin.
Oklahoma pulled it out and didn’t ruin my bracket, but the struggle foreshadowed what was to come. No. 6 Xavier fell to 11-seed West Virginia, 65-52, and 7-seed Old Dominion lost to 10-seed Florida State, 85-75.
Then, 12 hours after my Oklahoma scare, I was cursing the defense of Marist. Sure, the Red Foxes -- Red Foxes?!?!?!?! I thought he was a dead comedian – are the only New York representatives in the women’s tournament, but that’s not enough. I had stubbornly insisted to my Marist-grad boss that there was no way, NO WAY, his much smaller team, coming from a conference that had been 0-21 in the tournament, could possibly beat Big 10 regular season champ Ohio State behind 6-5 Jessica Davenport. A 13-seed beat a 4? NO WAY.
Crap. Marist won, 67-63.
Marist outplayed OSU. They smothered Davenport with double and triple teams and forced the rest of team – missing point guard and No. 2 scorer Brandie Hoskins, whose season ended with a ruptured Achilles – to beat them. Ashlee Trebilcock stepped up with a career-high 23 points, but there was no one else. Davenport was in foul trouble all night and finished with 13 points and 11 turnovers. She was frustrated by the defense, especially that of Meg Dahlman, even clobbering her with an elbow in the first half that the refs somehow didn’t see. They also didn’t see that Dahlman was hooking Davenport’s arms all night, and if I were Davenport – who is not known as a dirty player – I would have decked her. Guess that’s why Davenport will be a top-5 WNBA draft pick and I’m – a journalist.
Maybe it’s Maples Pavilion at Stanford, where the game was played. That was the site nine years ago of the biggest upset in women’s tournament history, the only time a 16-seed beat a 1-seed. That was when Harvard, behind then-national scoring leader Allison Feaster, downed Stanford. Perhaps the ghosts still linger.
No, I give all the credit to Marist – and not just because I want a raise from my boss. They were scrappy. They were playing like it’s March and made OSU play like it was November. Marist guard Julianne Viani made six three-pointers and had 24 points. Dahlman returned after her tussle with Davenport and another spill in which the back of head slammed hard to the floor, and bothered Davenport all night. Rachele Fitz had 16 points and point guard Alisa Kresge dished eight assists. With three guards on the floor, they took care of the ball, only committing 12 turnovers to OSU’s 23.
Marist’s reward for such stellar play is a Monday matchup with 5-seed Middle Tennessee State, whose 27-game winning streak is the longest in the nation. Run-and-gun MTSU, led by Chrissy Givens’ 24 points, blew out Gonzaga, 85-46.
Middle Tennesssee’s speed and trapping should be too much for Marist. And a Mid-Tenn. win will get my bracket somewhat back on track. Then again, Xavier and ODU also let me down. But no way am I going to say that there’s no way Marist can win. NO WAY.
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Back to Paris: It was a struggle, but Courtney Paris’ 10th rebound with 45 seconds left against Southeast Missouri kept her double-double streak intact at 59 straight. The Oklahoma center finished with 13 points and 11 rebounds on one of her worst career days. She averages 24 points and 16 rebounds. But even on an off day, she shows just how dominant she is. Her baseline layup at the start of the second half made her the fastest player in NCAA history to reach 1,500 points and 1,000 rebounds. She did it in 67 games. Also, while the NCAA is still scanning moldy record books to count stats on double-doubles, they say it’s clear that Paris holds the record – for women and men. The previous record-holder was Brooklyn’s own Billy Cunningham, with 40 straight double-doubles when he was at North Carolina in the ’60s.