CHAMPIONS! AIC CAPTURES NORTHEAST REGION CROWN, ADVANCES TO ELITE EIGHT
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (March 13, 2006) – Tournament Most
Outstanding Player Sharmion Selman (Burlington,
Vt.) totaled 17 points and seven rebounds as third-seeded American
International College captured the NCAA Division II Women’s
Basketball Northeast Regional championship with a 48-40 victory
over top-seeded and host Southern Connecticut State University
Monday evening at Moore Fieldhouse. With the win, the Yellow
Jackets improve to 24-7 and now travel to Hot Springs, Arkansas for
the NCAA Division II Elite Eight which begins March 22. The Yellow
Jackets will face South Central Region champion Emporia State
(Kansas) (28-4), a 61-59 upset winner over defending national
champion Washburn. The Owls, who saw their 14 game win streak
snapped, end their campaign at 29-4, with three of those losses
coming to American International.
“A lot of things are about matchups, and we match up well with (Southern Connecticut),” said 13th-year AIC head coach Pete Cinella who has guided the Yellow Jackets to their second Elite Eight trip in five seasons. “It’s tough to beat a team three times, especially when the two teams are even. At times tonight, we didn’t play as well as we could, but we always stayed tough.”
Selman, who averaged 18.7 points and 9.0
rebounds in AIC’s three tournament wins, finished
7-13 from the floor and totaled 10 of her points after
intermission. Tiffany Wooten (Mattapan, Mass.) who
joined Selman and Alissa Rubino (Port Jefferson,
N.Y.) on the All-Tournament team for the Yellow Jackets, had 10
points and six rebounds, while Krystal Pressley
(New Haven, Conn.) drained a pair of threes and added eight points.
Rubino had seven points, three assists and two steals.
Shamika Jackson led Southern with 13 points but scored just two points after intermission. Kate Lynch added 11 for the Owls, who had entered the game winners of 26 of their last 27 games, while Babette Noah had 10 points and 11 rebounds.
AIC trailed 36-30 following a pair of free throws by Noah with 9:50 to play, but the Yellow Jackets used a 7-0 spurt to reclaim the lead on a conventional three-point play by Stacy Boisvert (Agawam, Mass.) with 6:41 remaining. Selman got the run going with a jumper at 9:31 and Pressley drained a pair of free throws at the 9:05 mark to quickly cut the Owl advantage to two.
Lynch hit a jumper with exactly six minutes on the clock to allow Southern to reclaim a one point lead, but Selman scored on a pair of coast-to-coast layups at 5:00 and 4:00 that gave AIC the lead for good. Lynch scored again at 3:06 on a baseline jumper to make it 41-40, but Selman nailed a jumper at the 2:43 mark as she scored eight straight points for the victors, including a pair of free throws with 1:47 on the clock to make it 45-40. Southern missed its final five shots from the floor as the Yellow Jackets closed out the game on a 7-0 run as part of a larger 18-4 run after Noah’s free throws.
Neither team led by more than five points in the first 20 minutes as American International jumped out to a 7-2 lead just 2:13 into the game. Southern used a 10-1 run spanning 3:59 on the clock to take an 18-14 lead with 8:36 to play on a layup by Anabel Perdomo. Southern Connecticut would lead most of the rest of the way before the break, but Wooten came up with a steal and layup with 19 seconds to play to give the guests a 26-25 lead heading into the locker room.
AIC limited Southern Connecticut to 26.9% shooting for the contest (14-52), including just 20% over the final 20 minutes (5-25). The Owls also misfired on all 11 of their three-point attempts. The Yellow Jackets were haunted by 21 turnovers, including 13 in the first half, but overcame that by outrebounding the Owls 39-32, and also forced Southern Connecticut into 18 giveaways, 10 of those coming in the second half.
AIC’s first trip to the Elite Eight came
in 2002, when it fell to Glenville State (W.V.) 94-86 in double
overtime.