Lady Hornets advance to Sweet 16
ESU comes from behind to beat Northwest; Stueve ties ESU scoring record
By Jesse Newell
Sunday, March 16, 2008
CANYON, Texas — A school record was fine. But for Emporia State’s Michelle Stueve, a victory was much sweeter.
The senior scored 22 points on Saturday — tying Carolyn Richard for the ESU career record in scoring — but her biggest achievement was helping the Lady Hornets advance in an 83-71 come-from-behind victory over red-hot Northwest Missouri State.
“I think it’s probably one of those things that I’ll look when I’m 35, 40 years old and think it was something nice,” Stueve said, “but right now, we have bigger things to focus on.”
Bigger things, such as winning that one game that will advance the Lady Hornets to the Elite Eight. Or figuring out a way to play against Washburn at 7 p.m. on Monday, a team that has dominated ESU in both of the team’s previous meetings.
For now, though, ESU will look back and be happy with its dominant second half — one that helped the team overcome a late five-point deficit to advance to the Sweet 16.
The Lady Hornets trailed 61-56 with 11:21 left in the game before posting two runs that would be enough.
ESU scored the next 10 points — with all of them coming from Ida Edwards and Cassondra Boston — to build a 66-61 advantage.
The lead would get down to one before the Lady Hornets locked down defensively.
Switching off on man and zone defenses, ESU allowed just one Northwest field goal in the final 6:33, and that came with just 14 seconds left.
The Lady Hornets ended the game on a 15-4 spurt.
“I assure you we played more minutes of zone tonight than we’ve practiced all year long,” ESU coach Brandon Schneider said, “so for our team to be as active as they were and communicate as well as they did, that’s something I’m pretty pleased with.”
A significant adjustment that helped ESU was changing defenses on Northwest’s 6-foot guard Mandi Schumacher.
The forward dominated the first half, scoring 15 points on 7-of-10 shooting. She had four of Northwest’s first six baskets, and the Bearcats hit 8 of their first 9 shots overall to take an 18-10 lead.
“We started the ballgame trying to front her, and we got lost,” Schneider said. “ ... She whipped us.”
Instead of fronting her like the first half, Schneider made the decision to have his players guard behind Schumacher in the second half.
Though the forward was able to get the ball, she was farther away from the basket than she was accustomed to.
Consequently, Schumacher was 0-for-7 in the final 20 minutes, scoring just two second-half points on a pair of free throws.
“I kind of was getting pushed out and wasn’t posting up as low on the block,” Schumacher said. “Then I started getting frustrated and started forcing some stuff, so that kind of hurt me.”
ESU was also helped by scoring effectively in the second half against Northwest’s 3-2 zone.
The Bearcats were forced to the zone after three players picked up three fouls in the first half.
Oftentimes, ESU was able to beat the defense by passing the ball to the elbows, which created an open shot or an opportunity for a pass underneath the basket.
“I have to give my dad a lot of credit. The offense we ran in the second half is something that he’s ran for a long, long time,” Schneider said. “He’s always tried to get me to run it. This is the first year I’ve put it on. I’ve always been a little stubborn. I’ve tried to poke holes in it.
“It worked for him, and fortunately tonight, against that zone, it was pretty effective.”
Northwest coach Gene Steinmeyer had hoped before the game that his team could contain two of ESU’s Big Four: Stueve, Boston, Edwards and Andrea Leiker.
A quick glance at their statistics told him the whole story.
Stueve finished with 22 points, Leiker had 17, and Boston and Edwards both contributed 15.
“That’s about all you need to say about the game,” Steinmeyer said. “If they’re going to get 68 points, you’re going to have to outscore them.
“For about 32 minutes we outscored them, and for 8 minutes, we certainly didn’t.”
Stueve also added 14 rebounds, with Schneider comparing her tenacity to that of North Carolina’s Tyler Hansbrough, whom he’d watched earlier in the day on television.
“She plays with such determination and intensity,” Schneider said. “I thought she rebounded the ball tonight as well as anybody I’ve ever coached.”
Stueve now sits atop the career scoring list at ESU along with Richard with 2,378 points.
“You look at numbers sometimes in recruiting, and I think when you look at that record ... I know when I first came to Emporia State and saw how many points Carolyn (Richard) Davis had, I didn’t think I’d ever see anybody break that record,” Schneider said. “I don’t know what records Michelle doesn’t have in terms of individual accomplishment.”
ESU made 16 of 25 shots in the second half (64 percent) and outscored Northwest 47-30 in the final 20 minutes.
Now, ESU will turn its attention to Washburn, which won the teams’ two previous meetings by a combined 33 points.
In the last game, WU took an easy 78-52 victory in Topeka on Feb. 23. For a while, the game wasn’t even that close.
“They gave us a pretty good spanking the last time we played them,” Schneider said. “They’ve obviously a very, very good team.”
It will be the third time in the last four years the two teams have faced each other in the Regional Final. WU won in 2005, while ESU took a victory in 2006.
Emporia State women 83, Northwest Mo. State 71
Northwest Missouri 41 30 — 71
Emporia State 36 47 — 83
NORTHWEST MISSOURI (18-14)
Mandi Schumacher 7-17 3-4 17, Meghan Brue 5-9 4-4 14, Kelli Nelson 4-11 0-0 10, Lauren Williams 2-12 4-4 9, Jessica Burton 3-11 2-2 8, Micaela Uriell 2-7 2-2 7, Andrea Dill 2-5 0-0 4, April Miller 1-1 0-0 2, Lindsey Bayer 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 26-73 15-16 71.
EMPORIA STATE (23-7)
Michelle Stueve 6-11 8-8 22, Andrea Leiker 5-8 4-5 17, Cassondra Boston 3-11 8-8 15, Ida Edwards 6-12 3-8 15, Alli Volkens 2-2 0-0 4, Bree Kisner 2-3 0-0 4, Lacy Corker 1-3 0-0 3, Allie Renberg 0-1 3-4 3, Becky Zabel 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 25-51 26-33 83.
3-point goals — Northwest Missouri 4-24 (Nelson 2-8, Uriell 1-5, Williams 1-6, Burton 0-3, Brue 0-2), Emporia State 7-16 (Leiker 3-4, Stueve 2-6, Corker 1-2, Boston 1-4). Fouled out — Northwest Missouri: None; Emporia State: None. Rebounds — Northwest Missouri 36 (Schumacher 8), Emporia State 41 (Stueve 14). Assists — Northwest Missouri 14 (Miller, Nelson, Brue 3), Emporia State 20 (Boston 7). Total fouls — Northwest Missouri 23, Emporia State 15. Att — 539.
Washburn 73, Central Oklahoma 66
Amanda Holmes scored 27 points and grabbed 11 rebounds as Washburn took an easy 73-66 victory over Central Oklahoma.
The senior Holmes went 10-for-15 from the floor despite playing just 23 minutes before fouling out.
WU took its largest lead at 67-49 with 4:30 left in the game and was never challenged from there.
Corkey Stiger added 22 points and five assists, while Janice Bright contributed 11 points and six assists.
The Lady Blues advanced to their fourth consecutive Regional Final.
Comments
We allow registered users to post comments on this Web site. To learn more about our posting policies please read our User Poster Agreement Policy.
Posted by cheese (anonymous) on March 16, 2008 at 6:31 p.m. (Suggest removal)
McHenry has ESU's #. This game will probably be another Washburn double digit victory
Posted by eatasheep69 (anonymous) on March 17, 2008 at 7:15 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Schneider has WU's #. This game will probably be another Emporia State double digit victory.
GO HORNETS!
Posted by cheese (anonymous) on March 17, 2008 at 9:25 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Just like I predicted..........
Post a comment
We allow registered users to post comments on this Web site. Our goal with this feature is to encourage thoughtful discussions about the news stories. Using the comment feature to make random attacks on people is not acceptable. Emporiagazette.com neither endorses nor guarantees the accuracy of any user contribution. Responsibility for what is posted or contributed to this site is the sole responsibility of each user. To learn more about our posting policies please read our User Poster Agreement Policy.
(Requires free registration.)