ABILENE – In only its third year as a NCAA DI and Southland Conference program the Abilene Christian women's basketball team claimed a share of the league's regular-season title following an arduous 66-58 victory over its old rivals from Incarnate Word.
While many programs would celebrate such a milestone victory with postgame theatrics and fanfare, the Wildcats know there's more work to be done. And after tonight's win, they simply congratulated one another at center court as they've done all season long with handshakes and high fives.
Fourth-year head coach
Julie Goodenough echoed the team's subdued demeanor in her postgame comments.
"Nine months ago we made it our goal this season to win the title and earn the league's bid to the WNIT," she said. "However, our goal wasn't to share it. We want to win it by ourselves, and we've given ourselves the chance to do that Saturday. That's pretty good for a team that was picked to finish ninth in the preseason."
The win pushed ACU's overall and league records to 25-3 and 16-1, while the Cardinals, who left the Lone Star Conference with the Wildcats to join the Southland in 2013, fell to 6-22 and 3-14. The 25 victories are the most for any Wildcat club since the 1997-98 squad of Wayne Williams won 26 games, and this year's winning percentage of .893 currently ranks second in school history to the 1995-96 team that went 31-2 (.939).
Tonight's triumph additionally pushed the Wildcats' overall winning streak to seven games, its home winning streak to 16, and series winning streak against the Cardinals to six as ACU won its first conference title since Goodenough's first season of 2012-13. The Wildcats shared the Lone Star Conference regular-season title that year with Midwestern State at 16-4, and with one game left this season ACU currently leads Central Arkansas by 1.0 game in the standings.
The Sugar Bears (15-2) tonight held off Nicholls at home 56-51 and will play host to fifth-place McNeese in Saturday's regular-season finale.
Neither the Wildcats nor Cardinals shot incredibly well tonight, but for what ACU lacked on offense junior forward
Suzzy Dimba certainly made up for it with a stifling defensive presence. In a performance that should clinch her Southland Defensive Player of the Year honors, the Lubbock native set a school single-game record with seven blocks and registered her 28th career double-double with a team-high 13 rebounds and 19 points that put her exactly at 1,000 career points.
"Suzzy was everywhere in that game," said Goodenough. "We've told our starters all year long that they need to be prepared to be called on to play 40 minutes, and tonight was Suzzy's turn to do that for us. She created some defensive stops down the stretch that were huge. I think it's time for people around the Southland Conference to take a look at her for Defensive Player of the Year."
Dimba is the third Wildcat this season to join ACU's 1,000-point club along with junior guard
Alexis Mason and senior
Whitney West Swinford, who made history of her own tonight in becoming the very first Wildcat in any sport to win both a Southland and Lone Star team title.
Swinford is the only holdover from Goodenough's 2012-13 team – a season in which the Portland, Texas, native won Lone Star Conference Freshman of the Year honors behind 7.9 points per game.
Swinford was second to Dimba tonight with 14 points and nine of those came from the free-throw line. She was especially clutch from the stripe late in the fourth quarter as she helped the Wildcats seal a victory that never completely felt secure until the clock hit all zeros.
After leading by 10 points to start the third quarter, ACU went ice cold from the floor and watched the Cardinals make five buckets in five minutes to take their second lead of the game at 36-37 and 13:51 remaining. UIW only held that lead, however, for about two minutes after
Sydney Shelstead converted an 'and 1' at the 2:26 mark. The Wildcats then started to make some 3-pointers within the last two minutes.
Freshman
Sara Williamson hit one at the 1:27 mark of the third quarter off an assist from
Paris Webb, but the Cardinals immediately answered with a trey of their own as Yvonne Maosa buried her first long-range attempt of the season to once again make it a one-point game at 42-41.
The Wildcats forced one of 22 UIW turnovers during the final series of the quarter, and with eight seconds on the clock, Swinford's trey pushed the lead back out to four points at 45-41 entering the fourth quarter.
The fourth quarter remained tense even after ACU went up by 10 points with 3:45 remaining on the third 3-pointer from Mason, which ended up being the Wildcats' last field goal. From there both teams held one another scoreless during a two-minute stretch until Melina Merritt hit a trey at the 1:36 mark.
Shortly afterward Webb fouled Merritt behind the 3-point arc and those free throws cut ACU's lead to five with 1:05 to go. At the other end, the Wildcats missed a number of foul shots even though UIW kept sending them to the line (19-30, .633). ACU missed six straight during one stretch and later endured three consecutive trips in which a player missed one of two attempts.
The Wildcats fortunately didn't suffer as many defensive lapses, and after Dimba recorded her seventh block Swinford pulled down the rebound, got fouled, and hit her final two free throw attempts to make it a seven-point game (64-57) with 30 seconds to go. Webb sank two more on ACU's final possession in finishing with five points, three steals and career high six assists.
"We've come to expect that we're doing to get everyone's best shot and that they're going to play with the kind of effort we saw tonight from Incarnate Word," said Goodenough. I thought, though, our ladies did a great job of keeping their composure down the stretch."
ACU got off to a rough start offensively (1-of-7) and trailed by as many as six points in the first quarter before taking off on a 13-0 run over the final 3:54 to put the Wildcats ahead 19-12.The home team then used a 7-of-8 effort from the charity stripe in the second quarter to go into halftime ahead, 34-26.
The Wildcats led by as many as nine points three times in the second quarter only to see the Cardinals make it a one-possession game following a Haley Frias 3-pointer and a Brianna Williams 'and 1'. But Williams' layup would be UIW's final field goal of the quarter and ACU finished on a 6-1 run over the final 2:45 of the first half.
Mason tonight scored 13 points to extend her double-digit scoring streak to 17 games, and her six steals were a career high.
UIW's Quincy Baker led her team with 17 points on 8-of-11 shooting and nine rebounds. None of her teammates, however, reached double figures in scoring as the Cardinals shot just 42.3 percent for the game (22-52) and 22.2 percent from 3-point range (4-18).
The Wildcats made four of their five 3-pointers in the second half to finish 5-of-19 (26.3) and overall shot 39.6 percent from the floor (21-53).
Close to half of ACU's 66 points were scored in the paint (32), and the 22 Cardinal turnovers resulted in 28 points for the home team.
The Wildcats return to action and conclude their regular season Saturday at 2 p.m. against Texas A&M-Corpus Christ, which ACU defeated on the road earlier this season, 71-65. Seniors Webb and Swinford will be honored during a pregame recognition ceremony.
