IT'S ON
Tournament Pairings
Women's Bracket
Men's Bracket
28th Annual CIAA Women’s Basketball Tournament
Tuesday, February 26, 2002
Lady Rams Spear Lady Vikings Hopes – Advance to Friday’s Semi-final
RALEIGH, NC – It looked like the Winston-Salem State University Lady Rams and Elizabeth City State University Lady Vikings were headed for overtime.
Trailing by two with six seconds to play, the Lady Vikings Tonyetta Ruffin’s potential game tying jumper rimmed out and after a mad scramble for the ball, the Rams got it to Tiffany Whitted on the other end who scored a layup and was fouled. She sank the free throw and it gave the Lady Rams a 49-44 win in the second round of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association Women’s Basketball Tournament.
The Lady Rams will now play in Friday’s 1 p.m. semi-final against the Johnson C. Smith University-North Carolina Central University winner.
The finale was fitting for the game that saw each team seemingly take control of the game only to see the other respond.
The Lady Rams (16-12) used a 15-4 run late in the second to take a 46-39 lead with 2:39 to play. At that juncture, the Lady Vikings (14-13) came back with a Raquita Washington 3-pointer, a steal that led to a Kim Bedgood fast break layup to cut the lead to 46-44 with 36 seconds to go.
The Lady Rams Danielle Propst missed the front end of a one-and-one with 31 seconds remaining to set the stage for the final seconds.
“They (the Lady Rams) really understood that the game goes in ebbs and flows,” said Lady Rams’ head coach Daymond Lindell. “It’s tournament time and everything is going to happen in spurts. I just tried to tell my ladies that we just needed to be on a steady incline and win that second half,” he added.
Whitted led the Lady Rams with 13 points and 12 rebounds, Propst had nine rebounds and Lori Shelby dished out seven assists.
The Lady Vikings looked like they were going to run away and hide as they broke out to a 21-8 lead behind the 3-point shooting of Washington and the inside play of Bedgood.
The Lady Rams came alive at the 7:20 mark of the first half when they began their own 10-0 run to climb back into the game at 21-18. A Bedgood layup with five minutes left broke the scoring drought, but the Rams answered with two Kamesha Harris layups to cut the lead to 23-22 with 4:06 to go. Harris would finish the game with eight points and four blocked shots.
The Lady Rams took their first lead of the game with 42 seconds left in the half on a layup by Whitted, but Kristen Snead’s putback with 18 seconds left would give the Lady Vikings the lead heading into the break.
The Lady Rams did a good job in the second half of packing the middle and allowed just four of Bedgood’s 15 points in the half. After early foul trouble, Daminica Moody came on to score 10 second-half points and Ruffin finished with four steals.