Box Score For two weeks now, the Ashland University women's basketball team has made the game look easy. That is making life very hard for opponents and it may make it very difficult for the NCAA Division II postseason selection committee.
Saturday (Mar. 5) in Houghton, Mich., the Eagles won for the fourth straight time, dismantling Northwood, 80-67 in the second semifinal game at the GLIAC Final Four. The Eagles (19-9) will play top-seeded and fifth-ranked Michigan Tech (25-2) on Sunday (Mar. 6, 2 p.m.) for the GLIAC Tournament championship. MTU defeated Hillsdale on Saturday, 69-58.
This is the fourth time in the program's history the Eagles have advanced to the tournament championship game. AU has never won the championship game. The Eagles' last trip to the title contest came in 2007-08 and that was against Michigan Tech.
Those three previous AU teams that got to this stage were solid in every phase of the game, but this year's team might be the one on the best roll. AU has a four-game winning streak and those victories have come by 20, 26, 25 and 13 points. Northwood is the only team in that stretch to score more than 52 points against AU and none of the four teams has shot better than 35 percent from the floor.
This run should pique the interest of the NCAA selection committee. At the beginning of the week, the Eagles were unranked in the region. The top eight teams in the region will earn invites to the regional tournament. The tournament field will be announced on Sunday night. Of course a win Sunday against Tech would remove any doubts about a trip to the postseason.
Tech is a formidable opponent, far and away the GLIAC's best team over the course of the regular season. Tech loses at home about as often as Houghton, Mich., sees 70 degrees in January. Entering Sunday's game, Tech has won 28 consecutive games at home. The Huskies are 14-0 there this season. Still, here are the Eagles in position to grab the first conference title in school history.
Saturday, the Eagles faced a Northwood team that qualified as one of the league's hottest teams (wins in seven of its last nine games). AU subdued the Timberwolves (15-12) with another strong defensive effort, balanced scoring and a script that hasn't failed them – getting the early lead and making the other team play from behind with little margin of error.
Against NU, the Eagles built an 18-10 lead with 11:02 left in the first half. Northwood was able to slice that down to a 22-21 Ashland edge with 5:35 to go before halftime, but the Eagles didn't wilt and came back to lead, 33-25 at the break. Sophomore forward-center Daiva Gerbec (Dublin, Ohio/Bishop Watterson), battling the Timberwolves and the flu, had 11 first-half points. Senior forward Liz Tyler (Monroeville, Ohio), in the midst of the best stretch of her career, played 19 minutes in the first half and hit 5-of-10 shots from the floor on the way to 10 first-half points.
The Eagles put more distance between themselves and the Timberwolves in the opening minutes of the second half. In the first 2:06 of the second half, AU went on a 9-3 burst to take a 42-28 lead with 17:54 to play. Tyler had six points in the charge and Gerbec supplied the last three points on an old-fashioned three-point play. At that point, the 'Wolves were teetering on the brink of extinction.
AU was able to build its lead to 17 points on two occasions, first on a layup by sophomore guard Lindsay Tenyak (Wadsworth, Ohio) with 16:03 to play and again at the 13:15 mark on a layup by senior guard Rachel Poorman (Zanesville, Ohio/Maysville). Shortly after that, the Timberwolves mounted a push that staggered the Eagles. The movers and shakers in this revival were forwards Pam Wilson and Savannah Stedman. Wilson scored 12 points and had seven rebounds after the break and Stedman contributed 14 points.
It didn't help the Eagles that their inside players were picking up fouls at an alarming rate. Gerbec would end up fouling out, Tyler was whistled for three fouls and sophomore forward Beth Mantkowski (Fairlawn, Ohio/Copley) had four fouls.
At the 10-minute mark, the Timberwolves had reduced the Ashland lead to nine points, 53-44. At 8:26, AU led by eight points and after a Wilson layup at the 7:34 mark, the Eagles had a 57-50 lead.
That's when the Eagles got two critical three-pointers from a pair of young guards. With 6:36 to go, freshman point guard Alyssa Miller (Zanesville, Ohio/Tri-Valley) was right on the mark with a triple and AU was ahead, 60-50. Two free throws by NU guard Rachel Church brought Northwood to within 60-52 with 5:42 to go and then Tenyak, second in the conference in three-point field goal percentage, was on target with a trey with 5:23 left. That gave the Eagles a 63-52 lead and NU was out of time and energy.
Gerbec finished with a game-high 22 points and had seven rebounds. She failed to get her 18th double-double, but she scored 20 or more points for the second straight game. Tyler had 20 points and seven rebounds. She's had 20 or more points in two of the last three games. Tyler went into the game averaging 9.5 ppg.
Poorman notched a unique double-double with 17 points and a career-high 10 assists. The senior has 18 assists in the last two games. Tenyak had 10 points. Poorman played 38 minutes and Tenyak was on the floor for 37 minutes. Miller played all 40 minutes and had seven points and a team-leading eight rebounds.
Stedman's 16 points paced Northwood. Wilson had 14 points and 10 rebounds and Church finished with 11 points.
Ashland lost to Michigan Tech earlier this season, 68-50. That game, like Sunday's championship, was played at MTU.
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