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Turnovers doom Waynesburg in PAC tournament loss

4 min read

WAYNESBURG – It has become standard procedure that every college basketball coach, whether it be at the Division I level or Division III, is given a copy of a statistics sheet only a few minutes after their team’s game concludes.

Sam Jones, the head coach of the Waynesburg University women’s team, says the first two columns of the stat sheet that he looks at are the rebounds and turnovers.

When Jones looked at the numbers Wednesday night, they only confirmed what he already knew.

It was a bad night for the Yellow Jackets.

Fifth-seeded Grove City hammered fourth-seeded Waynesburg on the boards, forced a slew of turnovers and battled back from an early double-digit deficit to knock off the fourth-seeded Yellow Jackets, 65-57, in the Presidents’ Athletic Conference quarterfinals at Rudy Marisa Fieldhouse.

Waynesburg (15-10) gave up a whopping 18 offensive rebounds and committed 23 turnovers. It added up to Grove City (13-13) taking 26 more shots than Waynesburg and advancing to the conference semifinals Friday night against undefeated Thomas More, the No. 1-ranked team in Division III, in Crestview Hills, Ky.

For Waynesburg, the Yellow Jackets are left hoping there is another game to be played. Fifteen wins are not enough to guarantee a spot in an ECAC tournament, so the Yellow Jackets are taking nothing for granted and wondering how they were beaten so badly on the boards, especially after racing to a 10-point lead in the game’s first six minutes.

“There were two things we focused on for this game: outrebounding Grove City and winning the turnover battle. We lost both,” Jones said.

And Waynesburg lost them by a large margin. Grove City had only 10 turnovers, and its 18 offensive rebounds were 11 more than Waynesburg collected. Those two areas, along with some torrid free-throw shooting by Grove City, are what prevented Waynesburg from putting together another run like it did at the start of the game, when the Yellow Jackets bolted to a 12-2 lead.

“We knew Waynesburg would get its runs. They’re very good team. It just so happened that their big run was at the start of the game,” Grove City coach Chelle Fuss said. “We had to remain composed and stay steady after that.”

Grove City did as much. The Wolverines recovered from Waynesburg making its first six shots by holding the Yellow Jackets without a field goal for a nine-minute stretch in the first half. The drought enabled Grove City to rally and take a 31-27 lead at halftime.

Waynesburg did gain some momentum when Maura Bobby made a charge upcourt and beat the halftime buzzer with a three-pointer. The Yellow Jackets, behind consecutive three-pointers by point guard Lauren Blair, then opened the second half with an 8-2 run to grab a 35-33 lead.

That, however, would be the Yellow Jackets’ only lead of the half. Because Waynesburg had too many turnovers, the Yellow Jackets attempted only 44 shots, not nearly enough to fuel a late comeback.

“We’re really a confident bunch,” Jones said. “Basketball is a game of runs and that’s the story of our lives. That’s what we do,” Jones said. “But it’s hard to go on a run when have 23 turnovers. We try to get 70 shots every game.”

Grove City received big games from center Kathryn Erbelding (20 points and nine rebounds) and guard Kelsey Shirey (16 points). Cayley McClean contributed 13 points.

The Wolverines, who were among the worst free-throw shooting teams in the PAC at only 65 percent, made their first 14 fouls shots and were 17 of 20 for the game.

“We’ve been working on that,” Fuss said. “That has been a focus for three weeks. We were struggling at the line and needed to clean that up. We knew games like this are often decided by free throws.”

But it was the offensive rebounding and extra possessions that ultimately led Grove City to its first trip to the semifinals since the 2010-11 season.

“No doubt about it, especially in the final seven minutes,” Fuss said. “At the end of the game, we were able to use more time because of the offensive rebounds. If this was a football game, they’d be talking about how long we held the ball. Waynesburg can go in spurts that are unstoppable, and we were able to control that by not getting rattled and hitting the boards.”

Blair, Rebecca Kerr and Heather Davis each scored 12 points for Waynesburg. Kerr, the Jackets’ leading scorer for the season, had eight points in the first six minutes but attempted only five shots the rest of the game.

“Credit Grove City,” Jones said. “They played hard and disciplined. We had 23 turnovers and many of those were self-inflicted.”

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