Lubbock, TX - One of the last few teams in the 2023 NJCAA Division I Women's Basketball Championships, Blinn College certainly wasted no time announcing its presence with authority.
The Lady Buccaneers came into the tournament ranked in the top 15 in the country in scoring offense and showed early why, blitzing North Dakota State College of Science early and often for an 80-63 victory in the second round of the tournament on Friday at the Rip Griffin Center, avoiding the upset they suffered in this same round last year.
"I think I can speak for all the sophomores on this and I think we were just hungry," said Jakoriah Long, one of nine sophomores on the roster for Blinn. "We knew we had to come in and compete, we had to rebound and focus on certain things that we knew we had to do. We could have played better; we know our potential and that we messed up on a lot of stuff, but it's a W."
Long scored a team-high 17 points, one of five Lady Bucs in double figures, and Blinn (31-3) used a 28-9 first quarter that included a 23-4 run to take control early of the game and run away from the Lady Wildcats (31-4) and into the quarterfinals. The Lady Buccaneers will meet the College of Southern Idaho in the quarters at 5 p.m. on Saturday.
Ivy Fox led NDSCS with 19 points and Grace Massaquoi added 15 in the defeat. The Lady Wildcats never got closer than within 12 points the entire second half – thanks only to three straight 3-pointers from Charita Lewis – after falling behind by 20 at the intermission.
Skyler Barnes added 14 points, Hannah Humphrey scored 12 and Tiffany Tullis and Makayla Patterson chipped in 10 each for Blinn, which came into the tournament 13th in the nation in scoring, averaging 78.6 points per game. The Lady Bucs wasted no time doing what they needed to do to hit that average while also getting the job done with their defense, forcing 23 NDSCS turnovers.
One of eight teams in the tournament to earn a first-round bye, the fifth-seeded Lady Bucs wasted no time getting their offense going, and go it did. After trading punches for the first two minutes of the game, the Lady Buccaneers landed their first haymaker with a 10-0 run and battered North Dakota for the rest of the period. Blinn shot 47.4 percent (9 of 19) from the field in the period.
Blinn's athleticism was just too much for the Wildcats to handle as the Lady Buccaneers scored seemingly at will, and when they missed a shot many times they went to the free-throw line instead. From the point of the game when it was tied at 5 until the end of the first quarter, Blinn outscored NDSCS 23-4, getting eight points from Barnes and seven from Humphrey.
"I think of our 13 days off between games we were competitive about eight or nine of those," said Blinn head coach Jeff Jenkins, who earned career victory No. 500 with the win. "We didn't worry as much about injuries to some of our key players and just made them compete. It wasn't pretty today and after the first quarter we didn't shoot a very high percentage, but I thought we played hard, thought we cared, and thought we competed. We gave them 20-point quarters in the third and fourth quarters and we're not supposed to give anybody 20-point quarters. Usually, we run if they get 20-point quarters on them, but we're not running tonight."
The Lady Buccaneers didn't let up in the second quarter as Long opened the period with a 3-pointer from the top of the key, a free throw, and a layup to push the lead to 34-9.
NDSCS finally righted the ship at that point and was able to stay with Blinn bucket for bucket and cut the deficit to 20 going into halftime at 43-23.
Blinn cooled off somewhat in the second period and hit only 27.3 percent (6 of 22) from the field. But North Dakota SCS couldn't get hot enough to make a dent, shooting 30 percent (9 of 30) from the field in the first half.
Humphrey led all scorers with 12 points in the first half for Blinn while Maile Hunt had seven for the Wildcats.
