UB women’s basketball wins MAC name, earns NCAA berth

SHARE TWEET CLEVELAND — The exhilaration and the anticipation were obtrusive for the University at Buffalo ladies’ basketball team as they amassed the Mid-American Conference Tournament championship trophy and brushed the confetti out of their hair. The remedy became obvious. Not so much the relief of earning an automatic berth inside the NCAA Tournament, but the relief of conserving off Ohio in the last six minutes of a 77-61 win in the convention championship recreation Saturday at Quicken Loans Arena. The Bulls (23-nine) gained their first MAC Tournament championship in 2016 and their 2nd in application history. “It’s simply incredible to play,” stated UB guard Cierra Dillard, the tournament’s most valuable player. “It wasn’t simply Ohio; it wasn’t simply Central Michigan; it wasn’t just Kent State. We just performed through the whole thing we went through this season. We went via plenty. And we stepped it up this weekend to maintain that trophy up.”

UB led through as many as 20 factors in the first three quarters. However, the Bobcats cut UB’s gain to sixty-five-57 with five: forty-six closing on Dominique Doseck’s 3-pointer, her 5th of the sport. But less than minutes later, the Bulls converted off a turnover, and Summer Hemphill’s layup off a fastbreak opened UB’s lead to 10 factors. Dillard led the Bulls with 22 elements and credited her team’s capability to stay poised in a strained state of affairs as a cause for preventing the Bobcats (27-5) from getting any closer – a reflection, she stated, of UB teach Felisha Legette-Jack.

“The poise and what we went via,” said Dillard, who has scored double figures in all 32 video games this season. “Central Michigan, they got here returned (inside the semifinals). We had a lead, and they took the lead with the aid 4. We’ve got to stay poised, and that’s what the teacher prides herself on preserving calm.” But as for the relief of earning an NCAA Tournament berth, while the Bulls have been projected for so long as a low-seeded at-massive team? The Bulls didn’t see it that manner, even as ESPN projected them as an eleven seed entering the MAC Tournament. They looked at the MAC championship and an NCAA berth as attaining their goals. The tournament pairings may be announced on Monday. “We stayed locked in, all-season, understanding our goals,” stated UB guard Hanna Hall, who scored 17 factors and had seven assists. “Our goals had been to be higher than the remaining year and to preserve getting higher.

“I’d name this, ‘We deserved it, we earned it, we labored for this.” The Bulls set an unmarried sports software file with thirteen 3-recommendations, but Hemphill provided the maximum jaw-losing overall performance. Hemphill, a junior forward, scored 16 points and 21 rebounds and set a document for rebounds in a MAC Tournament game. Five players held the previous record of 19 rebounds in a matching sport. “I turned into simply going after every unmarried board,” Hemphill, a Cardinal O’Hara graduate, said. “At this point in the season, it’s now or never, so I became inclined to do any and the whole lot to get each board I needed. Get around, the field out, and take hold of it.” Hemphill mentioned that she had no idea she’d set a match record. For a remember of perspective, Hemphill grabbed eight fewer rebounds than Ohio did as a crew (29). “She does a splendid job of pursuing the basketball,” Ohio coach Bob Boldon said. “They placed her in positions in which she will do so, obviously, playing that bottom part of the zone, and they play loads of zones in opposition to us. So she’s around the basket plenty, and we missed enough pictures for her to collect them, it is for certain.”

Hemphill averages 10.6 rebounds in line with sport and has a crew-pleasant 255 this season despite missing the primary nine video games due to instructional ineligibility. “Just because she becomes ineligible doesn’t mean she isn’t clever, and it doesn’t suggest she doesn’t care. It doesn’t suggest she’s not an amazing player,” Legette-Jack stated. “It is simply manner that she will be on the shelf for nine games. “Every day she sat out, I saw her become more mature. And she got better as someone. She was given higher as a pupil and had a three. Three (grade-factor average) final semester. Things that show up that you can’t control, you study training from it, and you develop from that, and Summer Hemphill has grown from that.” Hemphill and the Bulls have blossomed at the best time, as they put together their third NCAA Tournament look in 4 years. “We put ourselves within the right spot to get to the NCAA’s, but coming into this weekend, we had one goal,” Dillard said. “To stroll out with a MAC championship and to walk out with (championship) hats on our heads.”