Feb. 18—MITCHELL — For about 25 minutes of game time on Wednesday night, it looked like the Dakota Wesleyan University women’s basketball team was going to beat No. 1-ranked Dordt for the second year in a row in Mitchell.
And then Dordt starkly flipped those plans on the Tigers.
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The top-ranked Defenders outscored No. 9-ranked DWU 43-28 in the second half and spoiled the Tigers’ Senior Night with a 65-59 victory at the Corn Palace.
The win improved Dordt to 26-1 overall and 20-1 in the Great Plains Athletic Conference, sealing the league’s regular-season title. DWU dropped to 21-6 overall and 17-4 in the GPAC.
The Tigers had a 41-27 lead with five minutes left in the third quarter. But Dordt was able to mix defenses to slow down the Tigers, force more DWU turnovers, and start hitting some 3-pointers and ripped off a 17-2 run to end the third quarter and DWU never had the lead again.
The Defenders were 4-for-9 on 3-point attempts after halftime and finished the game forcing 26 turnovers by the Tigers, who lost their first home game of the season.
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Dordt was also 18-for-29 on free throws compared to 11-for-16 for DWU at the free-throw stripe. Tiger coach Jason Christensen expressed frustration with the disparity in fouls, particularly as it impacted DWU’s availability of its main players in the second half.
“I just really felt tonight that I could have been a better coach, but I also felt like it was 8-on-5 tonight,” he said. “I just felt that way, and the fouls show it, and the free throws show it. And I didn’t think we did anything different than they did. … That’s frustrating to me, but we outrebounded the No. 1 team in the nation, and we held them to 34% shooting. But we can’t turn it over 26 times.”
DWU got as close as 59-55 with 3:11 remaining when Emma Yost made a pair of free throws but the Tigers couldn’t string together the key possessions late to get any closer.
“Dakota Wesleyan is a tremendous defensive team. They’re way more physical than we are, and we knew that coming in, and we were exposed with that,” Dordt coach Bill Harmsen said. “But we got a few 3-pointers to go in the third quarter, and that gave us some momentum. Then you get up by eight points, and you feel a little bit better.”
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For the game, DWU had a 43-21 rebounding edge, including 15 offensive rebounds for the Tigers. Yost finished with 18 points and 10 rebounds in the game, while Avery Broughton had 11 points, 13 rebounds and three blocks for DWU. Taliyah Hayes had 10 points off the bench, as Maleighya Estes, Shalayne Nagel and Jaida Young all had six points each.
The Defenders were held without a field goal for more than 6 minutes in the heart of the second quarter, which allowed DWU to open up a 9-0 run and build the lead as large as 12 points. DWU was balanced in the first half in building a 31-22 halftime lead, shooting 42% from the field in the first 20 minutes.
“We’ll all wear this one, and I don’t think anybody’s happy with the way we played as far as the turnovers, but we played hard,” Christensen said. “No one can question that we didn’t play hard.”
The Tigers held GPAC leading scorer Gracie Schoonhoven, who averages a GPAC-best 22.3 points per game on 65% shooting, to 4-for-17 shooting and to 12 points overall. But that mattered little when reigning NAIA player of the year Macy Sievers picked up the slack, rattling off 27 points, six assists, six steals and five rebounds for the Defenders. Harmsen said the turnover disparity helped equal the scales of the game by the end.
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“Dakota Wesleyan values the ball better than anyone in our league and in the country, and when you see (the turnovers), that tipped the scales back,” Harmsen said. “We got outrebounded by 22, and that tipped the balance in their favor. Neither team shot the ball exceptionally well, but we got to the finish line, and we were able to get enough out of it. It was a tremendous, tremendous game.”
DWU goes to the final day of the regular season with a matchup at Northwestern at 5 p.m. on Saturday. DWU and Concordia are tied for the No. 2 spot in the league standings. If both teams win or both teams lose and have the same record, DWU will have the tiebreaker for the No. 2 seed by virtue of DWU’s regular-season sweep of the Bulldogs.
Regardless, DWU will host a GPAC tournament quarterfinal game on Wednesday, Feb. 25 at the Corn Palace.
