Sports

Loss leaves Garnet ladies on brink of missing playoffs

In print | February 4, 2010

Dramatic finishes have been the story of the year for the Swarthmore women’s basketball team. This past week was no different as the Garnet (9-11, 6-9 CC) survived a double overtime thriller on Saturday against Franklin & Marshall before losing another heartbreaker on Monday at home against McDaniel.

In Lancaster, the Garnet led the Diplomats throughout the majority of regulation. But the Diplomats’ Megan Pauley, who scored a career high 32, hit a three in the final seconds to force an overtime session. In the waning seconds of that extra period, the Garnet once again found itself leading by three before Franklin & Marshall’s Beth Holt extended the game with a three of her own.

Yet the Garnet was finally able to overcome the Diplomats in that second overtime, winning the game 88-83.

Though Swarthmore turned the ball over 28 times at Franklin & Marshall, the Garnet ended up victorious thanks to the career night of Genny Pezzola ’12, who scored 24 points on 8-11 shooting from behind the arc, her fifth consecutive game scoring in double figures.

Coach Renee DeVarney, in her fifth year as the Garnet’s head coach, is thrilled with the performance of Pezzola, who has emerged as a scoring threat to complement Katherine Stockbower ’11 and Ceylan Bodur ’11. “She is fantastic, and she has a great skill in three-point shooting, is an aggressive athlete, and brings a lot of energy and a great attitude, and all of that combined makes a big difference on the team,” DeVarney said.

This combination of team-wide energy, positive attitude and aggressive play on the court has the potential to keep the Garnet in playoff contention. “We have nine conference games left. A lot can happen. We are not counting anyone as an easy win and we’re not writing anyone off as [unbeatable],” DeVarney said.

Swarthmore knew that the McDaniel Green Terror would be a tough test at home on Monday night, but as they have all season, the Garnet played with one of the top teams in the Centennial Conference.
The Green Terror ended Monday’s action having won 14 games in a row, their last loss coming back on Dec. 1 against the Garnet. But though Swarthmore committed just 16 turnovers, the Green Terror collected 20 offensive rebounds, grinding out a 71-66 victory.

Swarthmore was led by Stockbower with 19 points, Bodur with 15 and Madeline Ross ’13 with 15.

But even with Monday’s loss, the Garnet still find themselves only three games out of the fifth and final playoff spot in the Centennial Conference, with four games remaining.

In order to stay in contention for that final playoff spot, the team knows that it will need to maintain control of the basketball.

“[Ball-handling] is something that everyone knows that they need to get better at, but that is one of those skills that takes a lot of individual practice,” DeVarney said. “And it’s not necessarily just the ball-handling [in general], but specifically in very stressful trapping situations at the end of games.”

Pezzola believes that strong practice habits will help the team decrease turnovers through the remainder of this season and looking toward the start of next year. “To beat teams, we need to [put ball-pressure] on each other at practice and learn to take care of the ball that way … We need to play aggressive and smart, and we need to out hustle every team.”

“Bringing the ball up the court, we need to help each other out, pass the ball around, and be calm and patient. Once we get to half court, we need to set up our offense and run a play because when we don’t run anything, things get frantic. We either try to do too much individually or make bad passes and cause unforced turnovers,” Bodur said.

The matchup against the Green Terror, one of the hottest teams in Division III, is only the latest tests on a brutal schedule for the Garnet, who have the 49th toughest schedule this year out of 433 Division III teams. But Pezzola knows that the team will remain competitive through the final stretch of its tough schedule as it looks to move up towards the fifth spot in the Conference playoff picture.

“Scrappy play will get us back in contention for that fifth seed. We want the win so bad, and once we show how much we love playing the game and how much we want to win through scrappy playing, hustling and fighting for every possession, we will be able to win those close games,” said Pezzola, who continues to make an impact both on and off the stat sheets, taking charges, finding offensive rebounds and forcing tie-ups throughout the season. “Not only does scrappy play sometimes result in a basket or a rebound or an extra possession, it also raises the team’s energy level on the court, which will in turn make every player on the court and on the bench want the win so much more,” she said.

The Garnet returns to action on Saturday hosting Johns Hopkins in the start of a season-ending four game homestand before hosting Washington College on Wednesday. Action of both games will be streamed live online through the athletics.swarthmore.edu website on the Garnet Sports Network.