Thomas More makes most of misses
Holding the reigning Division III national player of the year in check wasn’t the problem for Washington & Jefferson College Saturday afternoon.
Sydney Moss, the daughter of former NFL standout Randy Moss, finished 15 points on 3-of-13 shooting. In fact, the Presidents held the No. 2 team in the country – Thomas More – to only 28.9 percent shooting from the field.
But it was the rebounding margin that was a bit lopsided in the Saints’ 83-53 win at Henry Memorial Center in PAC action.
“We simply got outrebounded,” Presidents coach Jina DeRubbo said. “They took 30 more shots than we did because they rebounded the ball a lot better than we did. We did not box out at all.
“They only shot 29 percent from the floor. We did our job defensively.”
Although the 59-42 advantage on the boards doesn’t seem as bad as DeRubbo suggests, it was the offensive boards that led to second-chance points that bothered DeRubbo the most.
The Saints (6-0, 13-0) had 29 rebounds on the offensive side leading to 32 second-chance points. The Presidents (4-2, 10-3) only had eight points on 10 offensive boards.
“You aren’t going to win a game if you give up 29 offensive rebounds,” DeRubbo said. “It should be the main concern moving forward.”
“I didn’t realize it was that number,” Thomas More coach Jeff Hans said. “One of those reasons is because we are missing a bunch of easy shots and we are right there to get the rebound. We are kind of passing it to ourselves unfortunately. We talk about trying to get to the glass and good things can come from that.”
The Presidents jumped out to a quick 5-0 start and held a lead for the first nine minutes of the game but began to falter under the pressure of the Saints’ full-court press. The Presidents went 8:05 without a field goal but still traded leads with the Saints.
After cutting the deficit to 29-28, freshman Abby Owings connected on one of her four 3-pointers to give the Saints the last bit of breathing room they needed. The Saints finished the half on a 8-1 run that was highlighted by a technical foul on DeRubbo to take a 37-28 advantage.
“Abby (Owings) is a freshman and she is figuring it out 13 games into her career,” Hans said. “We are really pleased with where she is at. Playing against that zone, she was open and more than once she made a big three to put us up one or two in the first half. We started to feed off that momentum.”
The momentum carried over into the second half that saw the Saints outscore the Presidents 27-7 to start the half. A large part of it was the lack of execution by the Presidents against the press.
“The mindset should have been, ‘Hey, look, we can play with these guys,'” DeRubbo said entering the second half. “We had a couple big turnovers and they hit a couple big shots and then it just fell apart.”
“The press got to them a little bit and they missed some easy shots and we were able to get out in transition which is what we wanted to do anyways to expand our lead and put it away,” Hans said.
Nikki Kiernan led the Saints with 16 points off the bench. She was one of four Saints in double figures.
“It is always tough coming up here,” Hans said. “(DeRubbo) does a tremendous job. We weren’t expecting the outcome that happened. They are well coached and are a good program. Our defense just created some turnovers in the second half.”
Beka Bellhy and Taylor Cortazzo were the lone Presidents in double figures with 10 points apiece.