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Home > SECWB News & More! > SEC Teams > Mississippi State > 2008 SEC Women's Basketball Tournament Day 1 Recap
2008 SEC Women's Basketball Tournament Day 1 Recap
by LeAnne Harrington, SECWB.com
Posted: March 7th, 2008 @ 3:09am
Well folks, let it be stated up front that this writer recognizes she needs to stick to what she knows: I’ll write about the games and let the prognosticators talk about Vegas odds or the weather. In case you’re wondering what I’m talking about, let’s just say that I’m 2-for-4 in my first day picks at the SEC Women’s Basketball Tournament. In what could be considered a highly unusual situation, there were no first round upsets and every game played out according to seed. I had felt fairly comfortable picking #9 seed Mississippi State over #8 seed Ole Miss; although Ole Miss played a much tougher non-conference schedule by facing teams such as Ohio State, Penn State and NC State before stepping into the shark-infested waters of the SEC, these two teams had split their pair during the regular season. So I blew that one. Then I had picked #10 seed South Carolina over #7 seed Florida in game 2, possibly more out of loyalty to my USC friends than anything, which made me 0-for-2 at the end of the afternoon session. But things got back on track in the evening session as I chose to go with the odds and that’s exactly how things went. Here’s a recap of the first round games from the 2008 SEC Women’s Basketball tourney.
Game 1: #8 seed Ole Miss Lady Rebels vs. #9 seed Mississippi State Lady Bulldogs. This one was nothing to write home about for either team. In a game marred by poor shooting from both teams, it was as if they were competing for a prize to see who could post the worst field goal percentage and still eek out a win. Mississippi State connected on only 19 of their 65 shots from the field for a dismal 29.2% field goal percentage, including a horrendous 3-of-25 from 3-point range. But Ole Miss wasn’t much better, hitting only 32.8% of their shots from the field on 19-of-58 shooting (4 of 16 from behind the arc). At the 11:00 minute mark of the first half, the score was tied at 7, with neither team able to connect with any consistency. Mississippi State slowly came to life, building an 8-point lead to go up 23-15 with 5:35 remaining in the first half, but a particularly nice block by Ole Miss’ Carla Bartee seemed to fire her team up, as they cut the Lady Bulldogs’ lead to 4. State went cold from the field over the next few minutes (not that they were particularly hot to begin with), but a nice defensive effort led to an Ole Miss shot clock violation and MSU scored quickly to lead 25-19. But the Lady Rebels’ Bianca Thomas hit a 3 followed by a lay-up and a steal to pull Ole Miss within one, trailing only 25-24 at the half.
The second half was more of the same. First year Ole Miss head coach Renee Ladner described the game as a slugfest and it was an apt description. Both teams traded blows the first 5 minutes of the second half, swapping one point leads back and forth. MSU stretched their lead back out to 5 at 37-32 until Ole Miss put together a pivotal 14-2 run to go up 46-39. During that run, Ole Miss senior Danetra Forrest scored 9 points and grabbed several key rebounds. But it was Bianca Thomas who was the real deal sealer for Ole Miss. She scored 7 points in the final 1:46 of the game, and had an answer each time Mississippi State came roaring back. Alexis Rack, Mississippi State’s 3-point specialist who ranks second in the SEC, had a rough day outside the arc, hitting only 3-of-15 treys, but when she finally started connecting from downtown and pulled State within striking distance, it was Bianca Thomas who answered with a shot of her own each time. Thomas finished with a game high 18 points as Ole Miss held on to defeat Mississippi State 54-49. Up next for Ole Miss: a date with #1 seed LSU at high noon.
Game 2: #7 seed Florida Gators vs. #10 seed South Carolina Gamecocks. First year Florida head coach Amanda Butler celebrated her 36th birthday in style, nabbing her first SEC Tournament win with a victory over South Carolina by a score of 71-57. Since my esteemed colleague and USC beat writer Marilyn McManus is also in attendance at the tournament, I’ll leave the heavy lifting to her on this one, and just share a few of my observations. South Carolina has a more talented team than the score would indicate. As has been their habit too often this season, they dug too deep a hole for themselves early on, trailing 34-17 at the half. And although they outscored Florida 40-37 in the second period, you can’t spot a decent team that sizeable a lead and expect to catch them. South Carolina’s first-half play was marred by a lack of defense in the post, and the Gators burned them early and often with drives straight to the basket for easy scores. Too many Gamecocks overcommitted in going for the steal, and left their player undefended when they didn’t come up with the ball. SC didn’t take care of the ball, committing 22 turnovers to only 14 assists, whereas Florida posted 20 assists while committing just 13 turnovers. On the bright side: South Carolina outrebounded Florida 46-33, and USC also made excellent halftime adjustments to address Florida’s Depree Bowden, who had burned them for 20 points in the first 20 minutes. SC held her to a single point in the second half, but she had already inflicted a lot of damage with her first half numbers. My observation is SC is a better team with Samone Kennedy running the point. She’s extremely quick on the dribble, has decent court vision for such a shorty, and distributes the ball well with nice crisp passes. Her assist to turnover ratio is already quite impressive, and should only get better. I hope to see more of her at the point as she matures and comes into her own. Up next for Florida: the Big Orange.
Well, that’s it for the first session. Check back in a few hours for my summaries of the first day’s evening session. ’Til then, I’ll be catching some ZZZZs and resting up for another full day of four games on Friday.
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