With a 64-60 home win over Sterling Thursday night, the Tabor
College men's basketball team leapfrogged McPherson into sixth place in
the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference. Aaron Whitelaw scored 21
points including a handful of late foul shots. But none of his shots
was as big as the 3-pointer he drained with 7:08 left, snapping a 49-49
tie.
Before the tie breaker, Tabor had allowed five straight
points at the end of a 25-15 stretch that wiped out a 34-24 halftime
lead. Sterling scored back-to-back-to-back field goals to claim a 55-52
advantage, their first since a 4-3 lead the Warriors had taken to start
the game.
Down three with 3:48 left, Whitelaw cut it to 55-54
with a breakaway layup after swiping the ball from freshman point guard
Zach Goodrich after a Sterling time out. Sterling scored a foul shot
at the other end, but Kyle Kroeker gave the Bluejays the lead for good.
After Orson Thomas ran down a loose ball on a broken play, he shoveled
a pass to Kroeker, who dialed up a 3-pointer from the left wing corner,
making it 57-56 in Tabor's favor and bringing down a thunderous roar of
approval.
Tabor forced a turnover on Sterling's subsequent
possession, and Whitelaw scored a dribble-drive layup that pushed the
Bluejay lead to three. He outscored the Warriors 4-1 at the foul line
as the game ground to a halt. With 16 seconds left, Caleb Good threw in
a make on the back end of a double-bonus trip to the line to render a
traditional 3-point play by a Sterling guard moot.
Whitelaw scored 21 points and Jared Hett notched 11 before fouling out in the final minute.
The
women's game ended in a 54-38 loss for the Bluejays. An 11-0 run in the
opening minutes proved too much for Tabor to overcome. Sparked by
back-to-back-to-back assists by Tasia Johnson, who scored four of her 5
points in the first half, the Bluejays cut it to six with 1:55 left in
the period. A 3-point shot by Sterling junior Ashley Kraft kept Tabor
from carrying any of that momentum into halftime.
Down 27-18,
Tabor offered no answer for Brittany Gasper, who scored all 10 points
during a 10-4 run in the opening phase of the second half. Tabor
finally forced Gasper from the game when she picked up her fourth foul
at 11:37. After setting up a field goal for Katie Fast, Johnson picked
up her fourth personal at 8:36.
After three foul shots by Fast
and Johnson, Katie Mount hit a 3-pointer with 1:20 to go, and Stacie
Herman followed with a driving layup to cut it to 49-38. But Sterling
strung together five straight points at the foul line, and that was it.
Tabor shot an ice-cold 7-for-30 from the field in the second half and
for the game made only 15 of 55 shots (27 percent) from the floor.
Herman led the team in scoring with 8 points, with Fast scoring 8 along
with 7 rebounds.
