ORIGINALLY WRITTEN ANDREW OTTOSON
Basketball is a game of inches-and even in the middle of a tough night, it is only a matter of time until good shooters find their range.
In Saturday night’s 63-52 win over Kansas Wesleyan, it took the Tabor College women 11:03 to score their first points, but found their scoring touch in time to avoid a double-digit deficit at halftime.
The slow start surprised at least one spectator, an official who remarked that “someone must have forgotten to take the lid off of the basket” after a soft attempt at a layup bounced twice on the rim at the south end of the Tabor gym before falling away.
Despite the sight of their team trailing 10-0 at the 9:22 mark, the fans in Tabor’s crowd must have expected that once someone broke the invisible seal on the cylinder, shots would start falling regularly.
The crowd roared loudly at the 8:57 mark, when Emily Vogts lofted a free throw through the net to mark the moment the Bluejays began cutting into the Coyote lead.
And from that point on, the home team’s shots did fall: a 5-0 spurt cut the lead in half.
When Vogts put in a layup at 1:17, Tabor trailed 18-14.
On the next possession, K-W scored a final-minute 3-pointer, but Erin Runge sank a pair of free throws with 0:19 to keep the game within an arm’s length at 21-16.
The second half opened with Andrea Robinson draining a 3-pointer off an assist from Donya Anderson.
Robinson took a pass from Vogts 1:49 later and connected from beyond the arc–and the shot tied the game at 24-24.
Then, 2:09 later, Anderson found Robinson open again, and the freshman guard gave Tabor its first lead of the night, 29-26, at 15:48 of the second half.
A defensive stop led to another open look for Robinson, and she scored again to double the lead to six points; the home team went on to push the lead to as much as 15 points, and K-W never closed within seven after that.
Robinson finished with 20 points-all in the second half-followed by Anderson, who scored 12.
Vogts led the team in rebounding, with 14.
With the win, Tabor improved to 14-1 overall; the Bluejays now hold a 6-0 record in KCAC games and a one-game edge over Sterling and Ottawa for the top spot in the conference.
Coming-the women play at home at 7 p.m. against Newman University on Tuesday, followed by a trip to Friends for a 6 p.m. start on Thursday.
TC women overcome slow start, beat Coyotes 63-52
