Chelsey Muri, the CCC's Player of the Year, saw her stellar career come to a close Wednesday night.
Southern Oregon Falls in Opening Round to St. Ambrose, 77-58
SIOUX CITY, Iowa -- In the end, the St. Ambrose University Queen Bees used a stingy defense that put the clamps on the high-scoring Raiders and beat Southern Oregon 77-58 to advance to the round of 16 against Morningside College, Iowa. SOU ends its season 29-5, the second-best record in school history.
In the game, St. Ambrose and SOU changed leads through most of the first half but the Bees surged ahead at halftime by a 35-28 score. The first half was an indicator of things to come with both teams missing numerous free throws and neither team able to shoot the ball with much consistency.
Yet, despite turnover problems, SOU was tied with the Bees 19-19 with 7:53 left in the half on a Jacki Speer lay-in with an assist from Chelsey Muri. The Bees took the lead right after that and never gave it up throughout the remainder of the game. With four minutes in the half the Raiders were still very much in the game as an Ashley Baker free throw made the score 24-21 St. Ambrose, but the Raiders never got closer than that.
In the second half St. Ambrose slowly built upon its lead as SOU could never close the gap to single digits despite a heroic effort to do so.
In the end, St. Ambrose relied on its two stars for its win. Freshman Ali Dolphin and sophomore Jenny Clark combined to score 51 points and pull down 20 rebounds. Dolphin was dominant inside, scoring 30 points on 12-24 shooting while Clark, the Midwest Conference Player of the Year, scored 21 points. The Bees built the lead to 64-47 with seven minutes left and eased to the win.
Muri, SOU's lone senior, ended her career at SOU on a night the Monroe, Wash., native would like to forget. Muri, who averaged 16.1 points per game, managed to score just seven, committed 10 turnovers, and was 1-5 at the free throw line before fouling out.
Speer also had a tough night, only getting off four shots from the field and scoring just six points. Speer managed to pull down 13 rebounds but was plagued with foul trouble.
SOU was the NAIA's fifth-highest scoring team. Coach Lynn Kennedy went to his bench as the Raiders continued to pile up turnovers – 26 for the game. Off the bench came Whitney Scott and Lindsey Scheffler to lend a hand but they too couldn’t find the hoop and combined to hit six of 24 field goal attempts.
The Raiders shot 30 percent from the field, but were only 2 of 22 from 3-point range. St. Ambrose shot 38 percent for the game.
St. Ambrose moves to 29-5 overall, the same record as SOU. Little consolation to the Raiders, whose season ends as the second best in school history. They wanted to play again, but St. Ambrose gets that honor.
One bright note, the Raiders return 11 of 12 players for next season’s team. Muri even returns as an assistant coach next year. The Raiders gained a great deal of experience playing at the national tournament and hope to return again, but with a much happier ending to opening day.