Whatever the cause, the Mary Hardin-Baylor Lady Crusaders found their long-range shooting touch.
UMHB connected on 11 3-pointers - shooting better from beyond the arc than from within - and bombarded Schreiner 75-53 Saturday afternoon at Mayborn Campus Center to inch closer to a berth in the American Southwest Conference Tournament.
The Lady Crusaders (12-11 overall, 11-8 ASC) - given control of their postseason destiny by Schreiner’s win over Concordia Texas last Thursday - can earn a spot in the conference tournament with wins in their final two games, or one win coupled with one Concordia loss or with a pair of Concordia losses.
And at this point, UMHB will take a tourney berth any way it can get it.
“We feel very grateful for the second chance and almost humbled by it,” said Lady Crusaders coach Kim Kirkpatrick-Thornton, whose squad has won two straight after a five-game losing skid. “It definitely fuels our fire. It wasn’t the route we necessarily planned, but we still have our same goal.”
UMHB took control by clamping down on Schreiner (2-21, 2-17) during a 22-2 run to end the first half, then turned the game into a rout by going 6-of-6 from long range in the first 12 minutes of the second half.
Not long after Jenny Black hit her fourth 3 of the afternoon, junior guard Stacie Urbina knocked down a trio of 3s in a span of 1:45 to give the Lady Crusaders a 23-point lead that the Mountaineers didn’t dent until the final minute.
“Our coaches always tell us that to help out the posts we need to make some 3s, and today we did,” said Urbina, who came off the bench to go 4-of-5 from behind the arc. “As a shooter, you know when you’re on. It doesn’t come very often, so you want to take advantage when it does.”
UMHB took advantage to the tune of 48-percent (11-of-23) shooting from long range, compared to its 35-percent (15-of-43) showing from inside the arc.
Coming into the game, the Lady Crusaders had gone 27-for-97 (27 percent) from 3-point range in their last five games.
“We’ve been working on our 3-point shooting all year,” Kirkpatrick-Thornton said. “It’s been a consistent struggle with us, but we shot it a lot better today than we have been.”
The Lady Crusaders combined their hot shooting with long stretches of suffocating defense.
After guard Monica Enriquez scored 18 points in the game’s first 12½ minutes to give Schreiner a 28-21 lead, the Mountaineers managed only 10 points in the next 21 minutes.
Following a 20-point first half, Enriquez mustered only four points the rest of the way - all from the free throw line.
“We changed to straight man because our zone wasn’t really getting the job done, defensively,” Kirkpatrick-Thornton said. “At halftime, I was tempted to say, ‘Let (Enriquez) have her points and let’s stop everybody else.’ But I knew we were capable of stopping everybody else and still controlling her.”
Sophomore post Landie Thompson had 18 points, Black added 14 and Urbina finished with 12 for the Lady Crusaders, who have a new outlook heading into next week’s final two games of the regular season - both of which are at home.
“It’s like the beginning of a season,” Urbina said. “We feel renewed again.”
edrennan@temple-telegram.com
