Mesa Legend - SPORTS - Shooting woes sink women’s squad against SCC

April 4 , 2006
SPORTS
Shooting woes sink women’s squad against SCC

Joe Calcaterra
Mesa Legend

It is extremely difficult to beat a team three times in one season, as the MCC women’s basketball team found out in an opening round playoff game on March 7 against Scottsdale Community College.
MCC had beaten SCC in their two previous meetings earlier in the season, but lost a hard fought battle, 75-62.
SCC won the tip to start the game and proceeded to go on a 6-0 run before MCC guard Kellie Olsen drained a three-point basket.
The first half was ugly for the most part, with both teams starting off sloppy and making careless errors and turnovers. Yet, as the half went on both teams started to warm up.
For MCC, Olsen started out by hitting two shots early, but was relatively quiet after that, as SCC did a good job of shutting down the sharpshooter.
MCC’s top player in the first half was Ashton LeSueur. The sophomore guard scored 12 first-half points, and converted two crucial three-point plays, one of which ended an 8-0 SCC run and the other which gave the T-Birds a 33-31 lead late in the first half.
First-team All-Conference player Jamie Nesbit struggled early on, turning the ball over several times and scoring just two points.
However, Nesbit wasn’t the only Thunderbird who had a hard time shooting the ball in the first half.
MCC as a team shot just 33 percent from the field as compared to their opponents, who shot 50 percent. And despite their poor shooting, the women were able to stay in the game, which was tied at halftime, 33 points apiece.
Starting the second half, SCC once again got on a hot streak, going on a 14-4 run to turn the halftime deadlock into a 10-point-Artichoke lead. It was from this run that the T-Birds never seemed to recover.
Olsen knocked down her second three-point basket of the game to cut the Scottsdale lead to seven, but it seemed every time the T-Birds made a run, SCC had an answer.
However, the women refused to go quietly and mounted one last effort to overcome SCC, when with nine minutes to play Nesbit stole the ball and hit a two-point jumper to cut the lead at that time to eight.
MCC then managed to force two more turnovers on Scottsdale’s following possessions and diminished the lead to six on a lay-up by Michelle Haws, who had a big second half with 12 points.
SCC answered right back when they converted on a three-point play and pushed the score to 61-50 with 7:30 to play.
From there the two teams traded baskets as Scottsdale held their lead near 10. And it was with less than five minutes to play that both teams found themselves in the bonus as the game looked like it could turn into a battle of free throws.
Nesbit hit four crucial free throws down the stretch to cut the Scottsdale lead back to six 1:46 to play.
Still, that was as close as the T-Birds would get, as SCC knocked down free throws of their own to finally pull away and beat MCC for the first time this season.
Haws and LeSueur led the T-Birds in scoring with 14 points a piece as Nesbit contributed 10. The game was much closer than the 75-62 final score indicates as there were some unnecessary fouls down the stretch which help pad the Scottsdale lead.