ASHLAND, Ohio – It’s a daunting task to face the No. 1 and No. 3-ranked teams in the nation as Findlay and Hillsdale represented the Great Midwest Athletic Conference in the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship Midwest Regional on Friday.
The Oilers and Chargers laid it all on the line in Kates Gymnasium and couldn’t have made the league more proud with their efforts against the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds in the eight-team bracket.
Findlay fell 76-72 to Drury while Ashland toppled Hillsdale, 104-82.
It’s a regional that stacks up among the best, and a compelling case can be made that it is the best, in the entire 64-team field.
As a No. 7 seed, the Oilers took No. 2 Drury down to the wire in a thrilling finish. Findlay was poised and matched Drury almost shot-for-shot, trailing by as many as nine in the second half, but regrouped and made timely runs.
The lineup deployed by head coach Jim Wiedie with bigs Anna Hintz and Christa Puthoff on the floor together seemed to give the Oilers the upper hand at key moments. Findlay won the second quarter, 14-9, and only trailed by three at halftime.
Despite Hintz fouling out with about five minutes left, senior Lynsey Englebrecht made a three with seven seconds left on the clock to keep it a single-possession game.
A few missed free throws and turnovers spread out over the 40 minutes certainly may have contributed to the outcome, but Findlay’s first season in the Great Midwest as an at-large selection with 22 victories was a resounding success.
Elissa Ellerbrock was the catalyst to the second-half charge as she had several memorable sequences with hustle, grit and crisp shooting to keep Findlay close. She would finish with 16 points and five rebounds.
Englebrecht, a senior, along with Haley Horstman, combined for 29 in their final go while Hintz, a first-team all-conference forward who returns for her final year next season, finished with 14 and six.
Drury moved on to the semifinal round to face No. 6 Lewis, which upset No. 3 Southern Indiana in the game prior.
Ashland, the defending national champion, extended its win streak to 69 straight with the home win against Hillsdale, the Great Midwest’s tournament champion. The Eagles kept their unbeaten record intact to move to 32-0 as six different players recorded double-digit scoring.
Senior forward Allie Dittmer went out with a star performance to close out her career, carving out 31 points and nine rebounds against the Ashland interior. The Chargers shot 50 percent from the field in the second half and leveled out to a more-than-respectable 46.4 percent for the game.
The Chargers hit 6-of-13 tries from three-point territory in the second half. Makenna Ott continued her hot shooting with four triples as part of her 14 points while Brittany Gray, the reigning conference athlete of the week, had 10 to go with five assists.
Hillsdale had entered the Great Midwest Championship tournament bracket as the No. 5 seed and proceeded to take down No. 4, No. 1 and No. 3, on its way to hoisting the prized trophy.