Top seed ousts ODU in semifinal
Monarchs fall to the Herd for third time, hope for WNIT bid
Abby Beeman showed off her conference Player of the Year credentials in the second half, scoring 16 of her game-high 22 points as top-seeded Marshall rallied to beat No. 4 Old Dominion 76-70 in the Sun Belt semifinals Sunday in Florida.
With the game at Pensacola Bay Center tied at 47 with less than 30 seconds remaining in the third quarter, Beeman drilled a trey to give the Thundering Herd (25-6) the lead for good.
“Tonight’s loss is a tough one to take,” said Old Dominion coach DeLisha Milton-Jones, whose team is 0-3 this season against Marshall. “Because it wasn’t about what Marshall did to us. It’s what we did to ourselves.”
Old Dominion was up by as many as 10 points in the first half and took a 39-31 lead into halftime. The Monarchs scored 12 points off 11 Thundering Herd turnovers and held the regular-season champions to 30% shooting.
But the mistakes started to mount for the Monarchs (22-9) coming out of the break. They turned the ball over 10 times in the third quarter and Marshall took advantage, scoring 13 points off those mishaps and seizing the momentum going into the fourth.
“The third quarter really punched us in the gut,” said Milton-Jones, whose team totaled 26 turnovers. “We had more turnovers than we did points and everything shifted. We got on our heels a little bit, it sped us up some, and we turned the ball over way more than we’re accustomed to doing.
“Especially since we’ve learned from these circumstances two times already playing them. And it really shot us in the foot today.”
Marshall pushed the lead to as many as 15 points, but the Monarchs made one last surge on back-to-back 3s by Halima Salat and a jumper by Joy Campbell that trimmed the deficit to 67-62. The Herd sealed the victory hitting 9 of 12 free throws down the stretch.
“We take on the identity of our coach,. and she’s not one to just lay down and give somebody a game,” said senior guard Jordan McLaughlin, who finished with 15 points. “She tells us to have heart and pride in what we do. When we go out there, we give it our all no matter what’s on the scoreboard.”
The Herd, who beat Old Dominion 90-60 at home and 89-75 at Chartway Arena earlier this season on the backs of strong second-half performances, started fast with three 3-pointers to jump out to a 9-2 lead, but senior guard Kaye Clark poured in 10 points to lead Old Dominion on a 15-5 run to close the first quarter. She finished with a team-high 16 points, 12 rebounds, seven assists and four steals.
“With the arsenal that they have inside and the way that they penetrate the paint, we cannot allow them to have extra possessions because it’s taxing,” Milton Jones said. “I thought we did a tremendous job in the first half of getting back in transition defense, guarding the 3-point line and taking care of the basketball — we had less turnovers.”
Marshall advances to play James Madison in Monday’s 2 p.m. final.
For now, the chance for ODU to continue its season rests on an invitation to a postseason tournament.
“We built our program to where we will always have a fighting chance to be champions within the Sun Belt,” Milton-Jones said. “But then we’re also building our team so that we can have postseason play just in case we don’t win. So I’m expecting a call from the WNIT because we’ve been working on both and we deserve it all.”