Wheaton College wins CCIW Tournament final
The Wheaton College and North Central College women's basketball teams combined for 160 shots Saturday night at King Arena in Wheaton.
Yeah, the CCIW Tournament championship game was a shootout, all right.
"Both teams played great," Wheaton coach Kent Madsen said. "The crowd was amazing. That was a lot of fun. A great environment."
The Thunder looked good from the start, bursting out to a 19-5 lead. But North Central, treating the shot clock as a mere ornament for the backboard, roared back to take the lead. The Cardinals led 46-37 at halftime.
"That's their style," Wheaton coach Kent Madsen said, "you know they're going to make great runs at you because they have so many 3-point shooters. So you know that's going to take place and you've got to weather that storm. We didn't do it great in the first half, but we showed a lot of resilience today, and we did a great job in the second half of just defending much better and then scoring. We were just scoring and stopping."
The Thunder (23-3) roared back in the second half, retaking the lead with 13 minutes to play on a baseline jumper by Ellie Zeller, part of a 16-0 run. With 5:52 to play, Hannah Considine's layup gave the Thunder its biggest lead of the game, 81-66.
The Cardinals made just 9 of their 45 3-point shots.
"I felt like we got really good looks at times, and they just didn't go in," Cardinals coach Michelle Roof said. "When that happens we have to make sure that we're crashing the offensive boards and getting enough offensive rebounds. We did that in the first half and that's why we had the lead."
The Cardinals got as close as 6 points on a 3-pointer by Naperville Central graduate Jamie Cuny with 3:08 left, but the Thunder didn't let them get any closer.
Considine finished with 33 points and 16 rebounds, and Zeller had 29 points and 8 rebounds.
Tess Godhardt led North Central with 29 points and 9 rebounds, and Cuny added 15 points.
Wheaton earned the league's automatic bid to the Division III NCAA Tournament with the win. North Central will find out Monday if its 22-4 record is good enough for an at-large bid.