The Sea Lions had a 15-point lead but stumbled late against Oklahoma Christian in a first round game at the 2010 NAIA Division I Women's Basketball National Championship and would lose 66-63 Wednesday night in the Oman Arena.
PLNU, a number-two seed and the eighth-ranked team in the nation, is ousted from nationals and ends the season with a 26-5 record. OCU improves to 20-12 and advances to the second round of action to play Westminster (UT) Friday at 4:30 pm (cst).
The game came down to the wire Wednesday. The two squads were tied at 56-56 with 1:43 left to play. The Eagles took their first lead since the game's opening bucket twenty seconds later when Brittany Kennedy made a jumper. Lindsay McCown then sank a shot at the 1:05 mark to put OCU up by three.
PLNU went into a scoring funk for the last few minutes of the NAIA tilt. It wasn't until they trailed by four with 20 seconds remaining that senior forward Colleen Planeta stopped the bleeding with a jumper. The Sea Lions were forced to foul to stop the clock, however, and OCU made four at the stripe to counter another Planeta bucket and seal the victory.
“The girls really tried hard,” said PLNU Head Coach Bill Westphal. “Maybe they tried too hard. We just couldn't get it turned around when things went wrong. The game was over before we could recover. We weren't able to bring our 'A' game and fell short.”
Planeta scored a game-high 31 points and seven rebounds in the loss. She wraps up her college career with 2,014 points, second all-time at PLNU.
"It's exciting," Planeta later said of her milestone. "I worked hard with my dad every summer to get better. But I would trade it all for a national championship. It's bittersweet. It's hard to believe it's over."
Fellow senior Liah Ector added 12 points on a 5-9 shooting effort and three assists and three steals. Ector would foul out with 24 seconds left in the game. Hanson wound up with eight points and seven rebounds. Kaitlyn Trotter added six points and four boards in the losing cause.
Point Loma outshot the Eagles 50-42 percent and both teams pulled in 31 rebounds. The Sea Lions hurt themselves with 20 turnovers which directly led to 19 OCU points. The Eagles capitalized on opportunities, scoring 14 second-chance points to just four from the PLNU.
“Turnovers and not being able to finish plays were the main things that hurt us,” said Westphal. “ We lost momentum and could not get it back.”
Ector echoed those thoughts.
"Everything that could have gone wrong, did," she said. "I think we shied away from what we did in the first half. We started rushing and taking bad shots. Once they tied the game up, it seemed that we went flat."
McCown paced the Eagle attack with 21 points with Chenoweth adding 12 to the win.
The Eagles scored the game's opening bucket but PLNU's PJ Hanson made a three to put her team up for the next 38 minutes. The Sea Lions led 12-8 before they went on a 17-7 run to open up a 15-point advantage with 4:34 remaining in the first stanza. OCU charged back with a 13-3 spurt capped by a Katy Clift three to go into the break down by just five points, 32-27.
More importantly, the Eagles had the momentum.
The Sea Lions began the second half with a turnover that led to a three by Chenoweth. A PLNU bucket was followed by another Chenoweth trey that pulled OCU to within one. Planeta answered with a shot from beyond the arc at the 15:55 mark to give the Sea Lions a bit of breathing room. That shot pushed her career tally to 2,001 points.
Planeta made another jumper and at 12:16 PLNU was ahead by seven points. The Eagles clawed their way back and would even the score a few minutes later. The next two minutes saw the game tied five times until Kennedy's jumper at 1:43.
"It's hasn't sunk in that it was my last college game," said Ector. "It's hard. But it's been a great four years. Playing with [Colleen] has been great, I couldn't have asked for a better teammate."
