BOWLING GREEN, Ohio — The Columbia women's basketball team is headed to the Championship Game of the Women's National Invitation Tournament after defeating Bowling Green, 77-70, Wednesday night in front of a sold-out Stroh Center.
Columbia (28-5, 12-2 Ivy) is the first team in Ivy League history to reach the WNIT's title game. The Lions did it in wire-to-wire fashion, taking a 23-7 lead in the first quarter and holding off rally after rally by Bowling Green (31-7, 14-4 MAC).
"First off, I'd just like to say a huge congrats to Robyn [Fralick] and her team … We've known each other for a while and I think she's put together a heck of a program," head coach
Megan Griffith said. "I was really happy that we battled and executed our game plan."
Abbey Hsu and
Kaitlyn Davis led the Lions to victory. Hsu scored a game-high 21 points and broke her own Ivy League 3-point record in the process, going 4-for-11 from deep to bypass her record of 108 from a year ago. Meanwhile, Davis was a force all over the floor, tallying 19 points along with a game-high 15 rebounds, game-high seven assists and three steals.
Hannah Pratt added 12 points and eight boards, while
Kitty Henderson tallied 11 points, eight rebounds and six assists.
BGSU packed the Stroh Center with a sellout crowd of 4,155 fans. The Lions quieted them early on, starting the game 4-of-6 from the field before using an 8-0 to go up 23-7. The Falcons answered with the final 12 points of the quarter, turning Columbia over nine times to fire up the home faithful.
"We just tried to talk about it pretty openly [beforehand]. Like 'hey this is going to be an environment that we have not seen.' We've seen 15,000 people at Iowa State … but this is something where they are going to feel like they are on top of you. We get that a little bit at home but not on all four sides and definitely not in the second half where the student section is yelling down your throats … We just tried to prepare for it as best as possible."
Columbia stopped the bleeding to start the second quarter with five straight by Davis and Pratt. The Lions turned it over just three times in the quarter and led by seven at the break.
Every time it looked like the Lions might start to pull away, BGSU closed the gap. Columbia built its lead to double digits three different times in the third quarter but the Falcons had an answer each time. They scored five straight before Hsu hit a jumper to give the Lions a 57-52 advantage entering the fourth.
The lead stayed under 10 the entire fourth quarter but Columbia never wavered. Griffith's experienced bunch always answered the bell, which included a desperation fadeaway triple by
Kaitlyn Davis at the 6:00 mark that caused an audible groan from the student section.
"It was like 300 the movie. It was like us versus the 4,000." Griffith added. "I said, 'Y'all got a lot of fans here. Everyone has got Columbia on their chest.'"
The packed Bowling Green student section all donned orange shirts that had the words "Beat Columbia" printed across the chest.
Back-to-back threes by
Kitty Henderson and
Hannah Pratt turned it into a nine-point lead with 3:00 to play. BGSU never got any closer than six the rest of the way.
The WNIT Championship Game will take place Saturday, April 1, at Allen Fieldhouse against Kansas (24-11, 9-9 Big 12).
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