In front of the largest Hammons Student Center crowd this season, Southwest Missouri State claimed the 2005 Sportsview.tv Women’s National Invitation Tournament championship with a 78-70 victory over West Virginia. The Lady Bears’ national title marks the second-straight season a Missouri Valley Conference team has won the WNIT. Last season, Creighton defeated UNLV, 73-52, in the WNIT Championship game to earn the Valley’s first national basketball championship.
In fact, Creighton advanced to the 2003 WNIT Field of Four, which marks three straight seasons an MVC team has earned its way to the semifinals.
En route to an NCAA Division I single-season team record for three-point field goals, SMS broke past the stubborn Mountaineers in the middle of the second half.
With tourney Most Valuable Player Jenni Lingor, who turned 22-years-old today, and all-tourney selection Kari Koch teaming for 43 of the 78 points and seven of the Lady Bears’ 11 treys, SMS snapped a 40-40 tie at the 15:52 media time out and launched a 22-6 run that pushed SMS ahead 62-46 with 7:21 to play. That 16-point bulge would be the biggest SMS margin and West Virginia got no closer than eight down the stretch.
By sweeping five games at home to win the WNIT, the Lady Bears of third-year head coach Katie Abrahamson-Henderson finished 25-8 and added the WNIT crown to their regular-season Missouri Valley Conference title.
West Virginia finished its season 21-13. SMS added West Virginia to a WNIT win list which included Southern Methodist, Gonzaga, Texas A&M and Iowa.
An overflow crowd of 8,871, 21st biggest in SMS women’s basketball history, jammed into Hammons for the title match up. The win moved Abrahamson-Henderson’s three-year SMS mark to 71-25.
The Lady Bears hit .500 (6/12) from three-point range in the second half and finished with 11 treys for the contest. That pushed the team’s season total to 305, one more than the previous Division I record of 304 set by Villanova in 2003. SMS also leads Division I this season in three-point percentage at .445 (305/686) and threes per game (9.24).
West Virginia jumped to an early 8-2 lead and held slim margins throughout the first half, with the Lady Bears missing connections on offense with numerous chances to tie or take the lead.
SMS got its first lead of the game on a trey by Koch with 15 seconds in the half, but the Mountaineers got a basket from Yolanda Paige at the buzzer for a 36-35 intermission advantage. The two teams stayed even early in the second half until SMS broke from the 40-40 tie.
Lingor’s four treys pushed her final SMS career record total to 265 and her final point total of 1,884 left her in third place on the all-time Lady Bear list.
Koch heads into her senior season in 2005-06 and will be fourth on the career trey list with 188 and ninth in career points with 1,427.
The Lady Bears’ other four treys on the night, two each, came from Sarah Klaassen and K.C. Cowgill. Klaassen now has 102 treys, eighth on the SMS career list, entering her senior year, while Cowgill winds up fifth all-time at SMS with 139 for her two Lady Bear seasons.
Cowgill entered the game the Division I leader in three-point percentage at .545 and hit two of seven to finish the season at .532 (74/139).
SMS also leads Division I in team free throw percentage and hit .833 (15/18) vs. the Mountaineers to push its season figure to .790 (430/544), just missing the NCAA record of .815.
Paige and Meg Bulger were the Mountaineers’ all-tourney selections. Against SMS, Paige posted 22 points, Chakhia Cole put in 17 and Bulger contributed 16 points for West Virginia.
SMS finished at .464 (26/56) from the field for the game and West Virginia, after hitting 50 percent the first half, cooled off to .387 the second half for a game figure of .443 (27/61). WVU led the rebounding 37-31 with Lingor pacing the SMS board work with eight while Nicole Lehman, Tiff Terwelp, Klaassen and Cowgill each hauled down five boards for the Lady Bears. Olayinka Sanni had eight rebounds for WVU.