At 24-3, Makana Stone and Whitman wait to see if they will get an at-large bid to the NCAA D-III women’s basketball national championship tourney. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
Now, they wait.
Stung by a cold start and a perfectly-executed play by their opponent at the very end, the Whitman College women’s basketball team fell 57-55 to visiting George Fox University Saturday in the championship game of the Northwest Conference postseason tourney.
The loss, the first on their home court this season, drops the Blues to 24-3 and snaps a 12-game winning streak.
With the win, George Fox, which finished in third-place in the nine-team league during the regular season, earns an automatic bid to the NCAA D-III women’s basketball national championships.
Whitman, which won the regular season league crown and entered the night ranked #7 in the nation, now has to wait to see if it will get an at-large bid.
The full 64-team bracket will be revealed Monday.
Saturday’s game was just plain rough for Whitman, which, for one of the few times this season, just couldn’t seem to get in sync.
A big part of the credit for that goes to George Fox’s defense, which shut down the paint, knocked the Blues around — Coupeville’s Makana Stone, the league Player of the Year, spent much of the game bouncing off the floor — and set the Bruins up for success.
Also helping the visitors was an unexpected run at the free throw line.
A fairly poor-shooting team at the charity stripe this season, George Fox was the exact opposite Saturday, knocking down 20-25 shots, to just 7-11 by Whitman.
Other than a terrible opening for the Blues, in which they went scoreless for eight-plus minutes and fell behind 9-0, the game was a gut-check, with neither team able to pull away.
Whitman seemed to have the upper hand when it opened up a late 53-47 lead in the fourth, capped by Mady Burdett drilling the bottom out of the net on a long three-ball off of an offensive rebound.
Unfortunately, the Blues couldn’t deliver the knockout punch, giving George Fox a chance to storm back and take the lead at 55-53.
Unable to get the ball to Stone down low — she was smothered, and finished with just three field goal attempts and three times that many bruises, taking shots to the head, ribs, and hand — Whitman banged away from the outside, and couldn’t get the ball to drop.
With the game on the line, point guard Taylor Chambers came roaring in from the right side and got a wildly-bouncing layup to go down with just 3.2 seconds left, seemingly setting up overtime.
But George Fox had a final miracle in hand, as Haley Strowbridge got the last two of her game-high 20 points when she rolled hard to the hoop, pulled in a lob over the defense, and banked in the runner.
Down to just 1.5 seconds to play, Whitman got a final off-balance, heavily-contested three-ball attempt up in the air, but it never came close to rippling the net.
The sour finish capped a game in which there were 14 lead changes and five ties, most of them in the second half.
After trailing 9-0, Whitman finally got on the board when senior Katie Stahl banged home a three-ball with 1:42 to play in the first quarter.
From there, the Blues crawled back to within 11-7 at the first break, then surged ahead 16-11 midway through the second quarter.
George Fox recovered, though, using its potent mix of deadly free throw shooting and clamp-down defense, and went into the locker room up 27-23.
Whitman pulled back into the lead, for a hot moment at least, with a 42-41 advantage heading into the final frame.
Burdett paced the Blues with 14, while Kaylie McCracken added 11, and Chambers popped for 10.
Barely able to touch the ball for much of the night, Stone was limited to four points, a team-high five rebounds, and a blocked shot.
On the season, the former Coupeville ace has 409 points, 225 rebounds, 37 assists, 26 steals, and 26 blocks, while shooting 166-316 (52.5%) from the floor and 74-96 (77%) at the line.
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