Sometimes it doesn’t really matter what you think is going to happen.
Sometimes players make plays and nothing else matters.
Like all that talk about Thomas More women putting pressure on themselves.
Win a national championship one year, the way the Thomas More women’s basketball team did last March and then schedule a tough, physical, veteran 30-win team for your opener the next.
And then as if to pile on more pressure, the folks who vote on these things pick the Saints No. 1 again even though they’re smaller and younger and playing together for the first time.
And then add to that mix by announcing that the presentation of the NAIA championship rings will happen after the game. Just in case there wasn’t enough pressure.
No wonder TMU AD Terry Connor and his boss, TMU Pres. Joseph Chillo, were talking about just that as they watched 11th-ranked Indiana Wesleyan, with their loud and proud red and black bus and the even louder pregame warmups, go through their paces.
But this was a pressure both teams wanted. It’s obvious that Indiana Wesleyan, with a large – and yes, loud – fan group who had made the pilgrimage from Marion has hopes to follow the Saints footsteps after getting to the round of 16 in last year’s NAIA championship finals.
But TMU? “We gotta’ get ready for the Mid-South Conference,” Coach Jeff Hans said in the wild aftermath of an ending not even a novice TV writer would consider. This game would challenge them and make them better.
Indiana Wesleyan Coach Ethan Whaley said it was no mystery why he and his team were here. “I love the way Thomas More plays,” he said, “playing a team like this is how you get better.”
And from the first half to the second, Indiana Wesleyan got much better. And a Thomas More team that led by 15 – 41-26 – at the half and by 20 – 46-26 — three minutes into the second half got way worse, getting outscored 22-1 over a nine-minute span.
Do the math. A TMU team that had been leading by 20, had been shooting 60.3 percent in the first half started out barely hitting 16 percent (4 of 25).
Time for the young Saints to fold up the tent, Learn a tough lesson and don’t let it happen again.
TMU had a better idea. Don’t let it happen on this night.
“I know we had all the confidence in the world,” said senior guard Zoie Barth, one of three returning starters for the Saints. “But you can’t really control shooting. We just huddled up and re-gathered ourselves.”
“Re-gathered” indeed in the teeth of a pressing, trapping, double-teaming defense that looked like it was on a game-winning roll until it wasn’t.
Which is why Indiana Wesleyan was here. Because the Saints didn’t panic. Didn’t quit when they lost the lead. Didn’t keep making those losing plays. They did just the opposite. Here, let Wesleyan coach Whaley explain it for you.
“They were just better at winning plays than we were,” Whaley said, “those three rebounds in the final minute . . . “
They were better, indeed. And the person who had been making the circus shots, drawing the charges, grabbing the loose balls and tough rebounds, doing whatever she could — Emily Simon, a 5-foot-11 senior from Hilliard, Ohio – upped her game.
She had to. “I think it showed a lot of toughness,” Hans said of his team’s ultimate step-up here after trailing for the first time all game.
They would be able to smile when they got their rings. Not freshmen Rylee Turner of Newport Central Catholic and Ludlow’s Jenna Lillard, both 2,000-point career scorers with Turner starting and Lillard backing her up with seven first-half points as the pair played 32 minutes between them. They were still in high school when those rings were earned.
And you could say this game belonged to the Saints’ sizzling three-point shooting the first half (seven of 15) and to veterans Barth, Courtney Hurst, and Mattison Vickers, who each finished with nine points. But after hitting on seven three’s the first half, TMU made just one of 10 in the second half.
But what a three — the final three — from Simon’s night that will not be forgotten. After Indiana Wesleyan’s Kelli Damman tied it at 55 with a three with 1:00 left, and TMU missed a pair of free throws, the ball somehow ended up in Simon’s hands after an Indiana Wesleyan timeout with eight seconds left. And then here came Simon swooping down the court.
About the 45-foot mark, just across midcourt, with more than three seconds left, Emily let it fly despite TMU having the numbers with Barth out in front and those precious seconds left on the clock.
Don’t ask Hans what he was thinking as that prayer of a shot went off. “I can’t tell you,” he said. But probably a version of that old coaching story when a bad shot – in the coach’s mind – goes up – and goes in.
“No, no, no . . . Oh, way to go.”
I know what I was thinking when that shot went up: Overtime.
Not Barth. “I know we had all the confidence in the world in Emily shooting,” she said. But just in case, Barth was heading down for the rebound that would never come.
“We had a layup,” Jeff said in explaining his thinking of getting the ball ahead quickly. Although it doesn’t matter what they had, they got a 45-footer that gave the rim a once-around and then dropped right through.
“I knew it was going in,” Simon said, showing off her new ring.
As it almost always seems to for the Saints who finished 32-4 last season.
And now they could pick up their rings with a smile – and for a No. 1 team – with an opening win.
“I was screaming “Pass it to her (Barth),” said Alexa Chrisman, last year’s power presence in the post who is now in graduate school at NKU and had a late lab that caused the ring ceremony to come after the first game. But she got there in time for the shot.
But pass it Simon did not. She made a play.
And that play gave TMU a win. And the ring ceremony went off without a hitch.
Just the way this new Saints team did.
With new players, new starters and the same ability to find the open man and hit the open shot. To share the ball to whoever’s open, if you come after them as hard as a trapping, denying, double-team Indiana Wesleyan did, TMU will use your strength against you.
Until the shots stop falling. “They did a good job,” Hans said of Indiana Wesleyan. “And we didn’t handle it well.”
And yet they got the win – and their rings. No. 1 in the nation, and in their fans’ hearts, who turned down the Bengals-Browns game in big numbers to head to Crestview Hills, the center of NAIA women’s basketball these days.
As it should be.
BOX SCORE
THOMAS MORE (1-0) 18 23 6 11 58
INDIANA WESLEYAN (1-1) 12 14 17 12 55
THOMAS MORE
Turner 0-0-0, Hurst 4-0-10, Barth 3-2 9, Simon 6-2-15, Martin 1-0-2, Jones 0-0-0, Vickers 2-3-9, Brenner 2-0-6, Lillard 3-1-7. TOTALS 21-8-58.
INDIANA WESLEYAN
Lawrence 1-0-3, Reid 1-0-3, Damman 3-0-8, Merrell 1-0-3, Frasure 5-4-15, Nutley 7-5-19, Knee 0-0-0, VanDyke 0-0-0, Rose 1-0-2, Reed 0-0-0, Mader 1-0-2. TOTALS 20-11-55.