PURCHASE, N.Y. – An improbable home victory was followed by even more improbable results on the road Wednesday night, and as a result the Manhattanville women’s basketball team will finish its 2008-09 season in Purchase.
Playing without their leading scorer due to a class conflict, Manhattanville came back from a 19-point first-half deficit thanks to four Valiants reaching double figures as Manhattanville stormed past Centenary (N.J.) College, 79-71, in the quarterfinals of the ECAC Div. III South Championships, held on Wednesday night at Kennedy Gymnasium.
For Manhattanville (18-10), Wednesday’s win gives the team its highest win total in 25 years, since the 1983-84 team won 19 of its 28 games played. The 18 wins are also tied for the fifth-highest single-season total in school history.
And as if a huge comeback victory and 18th win of the year were not enough, the Valiants learned afterwards that both top-seeded Albright College and second-seeded Gwynedd-Mercy College lost their quarterfinal matchups, meaning Manhattanville will host both the semifinal and championship rounds of the ECAC South Tournament on March 7 and 8 at Kennedy Gym.
Albright was defeated by eighth-seeded Juniata College, 77-56, while Gwynedd-Mercy was felled by the seventh seed, Wesley College, 66-62. Manhattanville will play Wesley (16-12) in one semifinal on Saturday, while Juniata (16-11) will take on Alvernia University (18-9), 88-66 winners over Neumann College, in Saturday’s other semifinal.
Sophomore Simona Gordon (Cambridge, Mass.) and freshman Courtney Turner (Staten Island, N.Y.) were the top-two scorers for Manhattanville on the night. Gordon netted a career-high 23 and added six rebounds, while Turner scored a season-best 14 points and just missed a triple-double with nine rebounds and nine assists in a season-high 36 minutes.
But playing without senior co-captain Olivia Nastasi (Cold Spring, N.Y.), Wednesday’s game was a true group effort for the Valiants, as junior Nina Johnson (White Plains, N.Y.) scored 13 points and grabbed a season- and game-high 16 boards while sophomore Carey Hickey (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.) added 12 points, five assists and three steals.
For Centenary, junior Kristen Camuso netted a game-best 26 points, including her 1,000th career point that came 5:31 into the first half, while freshman Jen Vasta added 17 points, six assists and four steals.
Despite the plentiful scoring, the game was won on the boards for Manhattanville. The Valiants outrebounded Centenary by a 62-33 margin, the team’s highest rebounding disparity of the season. As a result, the home team had a 17-2 edge in second-chance points for the evening.
Things did not look good at all for Manhattanville early on, as the Valiants held a 9-5 lead 3:35 into the game before Centenary went on an impressive 22-2 run (including a 16-0 stretch) to take a 27-11 lead with 10:25 left. The home team was 1-for-8 with five turnovers during the run, while Centenary connected on 8-of-11 shots from the field and hit all four free-throw attempts to jump out to a 16-point lead.
The Centenary lead grew to as many as 19 (36-17) on a layup by freshman Hannah Ally, but then it was Manhattanville’s turn to put together a huge scoring streak. The Valiants ran off 20 of the first half’s final 25 points, including eight each from Gordon and Johnson, to head into halftime down just four at 41-37.
The Cyclones held a tenuous lead for the first few minutes of the second half, before Manhattanville finally broke through on a jumper and layup by Turner to take the lead back at 52-50 with 11:31 left. Buckets by Hickey and senior Lauren Grenier (Oxford, Mass.) grew the Valiant lead to six, and the margin reached its apex at nine points (65-56) with 6:41 left in the game on a Gordon jumper.
A pair of three-pointers by Camuso lowered the deficit to four points and that was the Valiant lead with under three minutes left, when freshman Carol Ortiz (Naugatuck, Conn.) grabbed a huge offensive board and found Johnson for a clutch jumper from the left baseline with 2:41 remaining to put the home team back up six at 73-67.
The game then became a matter of free-throw shooting for Manhattanville, and the Valiants sunk 6-of-8 shots down the stretch to seal the comeback victory.
The Valiants shot 50.0 percent (17-for-34) from the field in the second half to finish at 41.0 percent (32-for-78) on the night, while Centenary cooled off considerably after a 16-for-33 (48.5 percent) first half to finish at 40.3 percent (27-for-67) from the floor, including a 5-for-20 mark from beyond the arc.
