TC women struggle against the giants of the KCAC

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN MATT INSLEY & DON RATZLAFF
The Tabor College women’s basketball team struggled offensively Monday, falling on the road to Sterling College, 70-44.


The game featured rough play and poor shooting from both teams. Tabor shot 10 percent from the floor in the first half, making only three of 30 shots.


Head coach Chanda Rigby was surprised Sterling didn’t take advantage of the poor shooting.


“We’re lucky we weren’t down by 30 points in the first half,” she said.


Sterling jumped to a 17-6 lead in the first half and led 34-17 at the break. Ten of Tabor’s 17 points came at the free-throw line.


Despite playing an atrocious first half, the Bluejays made a valiant comeback attempt in the second.


Tabor trailed by 19 points with 17:35 left in the second half when Meaghan Coe put in a layup that jump-started a Bluejay run.


Carmen Hein hit a 3-pointer 30 seconds later, and Holly Ross followed with two more 3-point baskets. By the time the two-minute barrage was over, Tabor had scored 11 points and trailed by only eight.


As good as Tabor was from beyond the arc, Sterling was as bad. They didn’t make a 3-pointer the entire game, going 0-for-11.


After the two-minute scoring barrage, which accounted for almost half of Tabor’s field goals for the game, The Jays could get nothing going. They were outscored 32-14 the rest of the way.


The Bluejays have dropped their last four games, but Rigby says the next five are the most important part of her team’s schedule.


“That’s going to tell the tale, whether we have a winning season or not. That’s what we set out to do-to turn things around and have a winning season.”Bethany 72, Tabor 46


Bethany’s Amy Scardina accounted for 17 straight points during a 19-5 run to start the game and Tabor never recovered as the Swedes spanked the Jays, 72-46, Saturday night in Hillsboro.


The 5-6 senior hit all seven shots she put up over a five-minute stretch that began three and a half minutes into the contest when the score was still tied at 2.


Ironically, the sharpshooter scored only one other basket all night to finish with a game-high 19 points, but her teammates more than stepped up to carry their share of the scoring load.


Meanwhile, Tabor shooters struggled from the field, managing only 18.5 percent shooting in the first half. The Jays missed from short range and long and went into the locker room at intermission trailing 39-18.


A 9-0 run by Tabor in the second half cut the lead to 15 points with 10:44 to go, but Scardina’s only bucket of the half started Bethany on a 15-2 run that squelched any hope of a Bluejay comeback.


Tabor finished with 26 percent shooting for the game and managed only 50 percent from the line (9-18). Bethany shot 51 percent from the field and 83.3 percent from the line (10-12).


“We played, in my opinion, the best team in the conference, and they played really well,” coach Chanda Rigby said. “That didn’t help things, but it doesn’t account for us giving them coast-to-coast layups and us shooting 18 percent in the first half. That’s just ugly basketball.”


Holly Ross and Carmen Hein each scored 14 points to lead Tabor. Ross was 3-of-3 behind the arc and Hein 4-of-8.




Friends 68, Tabor 47


Tabor needed to be in top form Thursday night to have even a chance of upsetting KCAC-leading Friends in Wichita. Instead, in more ways than one, they were far from it and were soundly beaten by the Falcons, 68-47.


The Jays came into the game needing triage as much as anything.


Not only were post players Janea Rademacher and Susan Carter still out with injuries, several other players had missed practices because of illness-including team leader Tesha Werth, who was out all week and wasn’t expected to play much. She put in a tough 32 minutes anyway.


As if that wasn’t enough, coach Chanda Rigby was gone all week tending to a family medical emergency in Louisiana, and showed up at courtside just before the game.


Toss in the level of competition the Bluejays were up against and its easy to understand why the offense managed only 29 percent field-goal shooting.


“I think we were out of synch for a lot of reasons,” Rigby said. “It’s hard to win when one team shoots 45 percent and we shoot 20 percent-at least that’s the way it was in the first half.”


Despite the adversity, Tabor hung with Friends early in the game and trailed only by five, 16-11, with 11:30 left in the half. But a 10-2 Friends run over the next three minutes pushed the lead to double digits. It remained there until intermission, when Friends led 37-23.


A 10-0 Friends run between the 16:51 and 13:40 mark of the second half bumped the lead to 22, 49-27. Tabor couldn’t muster a patented late-game rally on this night, but did keep pace the rest of the way.


The Falcons, who were 9-1 in KCAC play coming into the game, got 52 of their 68 points from Amber Foster (22), Jessica Trahan (20) and Kelli Chisholm (10), each of whom is among the top six scorers in the KCAC.


“They can just score better than us,” Rigby said of the Falcons. “I don’t think their defense was better than ours. We just didn’t score, and that’s the name of the game-basket-ball. It’s got to go in the basket.”


Angela Kroeker led Tabor with nine points, six of which came late when the outcome was already decided. Holly Ross added eight.

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