CONWAY — For the third straight season, Central Arkansas will be playing for a tournament championship.
The Sugar Bears punched their ticket to the championship game of the Women's Basketball Invitational on Saturday, beating Nevada 65-56 in the Farris Center to set up a title game with Yale at 7:00pm on Thursday in Conway.
After earning back-to-back NCAA tournament berths in 2016 and 2017 by winning the Southland Conference tournament championship in each of those seasons, the Sugar Bears have taken a different route this postseason – but have made the most of it, scoring victories over SIU Edwardsville, Weber State and now Nevada to play for their first national postseason tournament championship.
After a low-scoring first half in which the Sugar Bears (25-9) led the Wolf Pack (19-17) just 27-24, the teams came out with more offensive firepower in the third quarter as Central Arkansas would outscore Nevada 21-19 in the period.
Nevada was hot out of the gate in the 3rd, scoring the first six points to take a three-point lead. That would be short lived, however, as the Sugar Bears quickly answered with a 13-3 run including three 3-pointers – two from Antonija Bozic and one from Taylor Baudoin – and four points from Kamry Orr, to go ahead by seven.
The lead would never grow to more than nine in a tightly contested fourth quarter, but Nevada was also never able to mount a substantial run and drew no closer than four in the final minutes. Down five with under a minute left, Nevada's Camariah King misfired on a 3-pointer, and 11 seconds later the Wolf Pack sent Baudoin to the line where she knocked down the pair to put the Central Arkansas lead back at seven.
With 38 seconds left, the Wolf Pack's T Moe was off on a layup attempt and Baudoin grabbed the rebound. Bozic was then sent to the line eight seconds later and made both to put the lead back at nine. King and Moe were both unsuccessful on 3-point attempts on Nevada's final possession, and the Sugar Bears would run out the clock for the win.
The win gives the Sugar Bears their third straight season with 25 or more victories, making them one of just 17 Division I programs (out of 349) to reach that mark in each of the last three years, joining Baylor, Connecticut, DePaul, Florida Gulf Coast, Florida State, Green Bay, Louisville, Maryland, Mississippi State, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oregon State, Quinnipiac, South Carolina, Texas and UCLA.
Baudoin led all players with 24 points, marking her 29th game this season in double figures and her 10th with at least 20. In doing so, she eclipsed the 1,200 point mark for her three-year career at Central Arkansas, making her just the fifth Sugar Bear in the program's Division I era to reach that number.
Kierra Jordan had 12 points and a game-high 9 rebounds, while Orr had 10 points, 6 rebounds and 5 assists and Bozic added 10 points.Taylor Sells added 6 points and 4 rebounds, and Angel Williams scored 3 points. Tieraney Paylor equaled her season high with 8 minutes played, and grabbed 3 rebounds – including a pair on the offensive end – as the Sugar Bears outrebounded the larger Wolf Pack 31-26.
Nevada – which had won 7 of its last 8 games – led for just 1:43, bringing the Sugar Bears' total time to trail through 120 minutes in the WBI to just 8:10.
The Sugar Bears will now continue their Postseason Run presented by First Security Bank with their first-ever meeting against Yale, which advanced to the championship with a 76-74 overtime win against South Alabama on Saturday.The Bulldogs enter with an 18-13 overall record after going 8-6 in Ivy League play, and have defeated Northeastern, Binghamton, and South Alabama on their road to Conway.
With the win the Sugar Bears improve to 41-5 (.891) at home, 79-18 (.814) overall, and 8-3 (.727) in postseason play over the last three seasons.
It will be just the fourth time for a Southland team to play for a national tournament championship, with Northwestern State losing to Texas A&M in the finals of the 1995 WNIT, McNeese falling to Detroit-Mercy in the 2013 WBI and Stephen F. Austin coming up short against Illinois-Chicago in the 2014 WBI.
QUOTES
Head Coach Sandra Rushing
"I'm really proud for our seniors, thought KJ and TB played really smart down stretch with four fouls, Angel did great job defensively. This is exciting. We're playing for a championship, that's awesome. Here on our home floor – we have the opportunity to cut down nets, what better way to end the season for our seniors."
"I thought TP did great – gave us valuable minutes, did a tremendous job. She made hustle plays, big plays for us. This time of year you have to have hustle plays. It was crucial for us. Antonija is such a great shooter, she comes in and sparks us."
"[To win 25 three years in a row] is pretty special. It says a lot about the players we've had come through this program, and the ones who laid the foundation. We had a vision when we started a few years ago, and they bought into that vision. Angel has been a part of it all the way through, and when we got KJ and TB they bought in, and that's how you win ballgames – with players buying in."
"I'm proud of this group of young ladies and I want to thank the fans and the cheerleaders and everybody who was out here tonight. Let's go get one more."
Senior forward Taylor Baudoin
"It feels good. This was a tough one. They had us outsized at every position. They're on our talent level, but a little bit bigger, but we knew we could hang with them but had to box out and do the little things."
"I give a lot of credit to TP. She hasn't played a lot of minutes, but she went in there and got hustle rebounds and played her role. She's not looking to score on offense – that's not her role right now – but she got the rebounds she needed and played defense. MK came in and had some hustle plays, and it was good for me and KJ because we were in foul trouble and they gave us a little rest and we weren't too worried about Nevada going on a run."
"One more. It means a lot to be playing for a championship. After the loss to SFA (in the Southland tournament) we had to adjust our focus and write new goals. But it still means the same to me. Shout out to the fans – they came and showed out, made it hard to hear a lot of times, but we wouldn't have it any other way."
