Missed Last-Second Shot Allows St. Thomas Aquinas To Sneak Past Women's Basketball, 52-51
Box Score
BROOKVILLE, N.Y. (Jan. 27, 2011) – A missed jumper by senior guard Janea Aikan (St. Albans, N.Y.) with one second on the clock in the second half allowed St. Thomas Aquinas to escape with a 52-51 win over C.W. Post in an East Coast Conference women's basketball clash Thursday evening at the Pratt Recreation Center.
St. Thomas Aquinas improves to 15-4 overall and 11-1 in the ECC while C.W. Post dips to 8-9 and 6-6 in conference action.
Briana Sloper led the Spartans with 17 points, shooting 7 of 11 shooting from field goal range, and registered five rebounds. Teammate Shpresa Liharevic chipped in 11 points.
St. Thomas Aquinas opened the game on a 6-0 advantage. The Pioneers scored their first basket of the game when Aiken banked in a jumper at 18:16.
The Spartans held the lead for awhile but the Pioneers caught up with a 9-2 run and stole the lead on a made jumper from junior guard Felicia Joyner (Lindenhurst, N.Y.) at 9:45.
Neither team could hit a basket for nearly three minutes until Sloper put in the go-ahead basket on a layup at 7:02. From there, the two teams exchanged the lead back and forth over the final minutes and recorded six tie-ups before the buzzer sounded.
St. Thomas Aquinas went to the locker room with a 31-29 lead after scoring the final basket of the half on a layup from Leane Urbancik with seven seconds to play.
The teams went blow for blow in the second half but the Spartans came away the victor after outscoring the host team, 22-21, in the half.
The Pioneers battled through the entire half and set themselves up for heroics in the final six minutes of play after knocking down an eight-point lead (52-44) with three straight baskets, including a 3-pointer from Aiken at 5:47. They gained possession on a jump ball with 19 seconds left and it looked like they might pull off the upset, but Aiken's last second running jumper with no time on the clock would not go and the Spartans survived the threat.
Aiken led the Pioneers with 17 points with three rebounds and four assists. Senior forward Alyssa Lombardi (New Fairfield, Conn.) pulled down a game-high 12 rebounds and also had one block, one assist and two steals.
C.W. Post is back in action when it travels to Flushing to take on Queens on Saturday at 5 p.m.