BOX SCORE
LA JOLLA, Calif. – Azusa Pacific won its first NCAA Division II Women’s Basketball West Regional Championship by beating a second-consecutive top-10 team in the nation with a 65-63 win over Alaska Anchorage on an improbable buzzer beater by
Lydia Nieto on Monday night in RIMAC Arena.
Azusa Pacific led 62-60 with 12 seconds left in the game when Alaska Anchorage head coach Ryan McCartney called timeout to set up a play for Tara Thompson, who has been one of the best 3-point shooters in the nation throughout her career at Alaska Anchorage. The Cougars’ defense forced Thompson to take a shot with time running out from five feet beyond the arc, but Thompson nailed the shot to give the No. 3-seeded Seawolves a 63-62 lead with 3.2 seconds left in the game.
Azusa Pacific head coach
TJ Hardeman called timeout his final timeout to advance the ball in front of the Cougars’ bench.
Daylee Hanson inbounded the ball to Nieto and then bolted to the paint to try to get open.
Savanna Hanson came running to the top of the arc, but was tightly defended. Nieto was looking to make another pass, but heard the bench yelling “3…2…1…” so Nieto jumped to her left and threw up a shot at the buzzer that hit nothing but net.
“We practiced that play before and it was the last thing we did during shoot-around today,” Hardeman said, “but it never went like that in practice.”
With the win, Azusa Pacific is the West Region champion and advances to the Elite Eight in Columbus, Ohio, where the Cougars will compete for a national title. Azusa Pacific is now 28-5 on the season, while Alaska Anchorage finishes the year with a 30-3 record after finishing runner-up for the second year in a row.
Alaska Anchorage led by as much as 12 points in the first half, but Azusa Pacific finished the second quarter on a 9-0 run to take a 38-37 lead into the break. Nieto made a handful of crucial 3-pointers during the tournament before her championship-winning buzzer-beater. The freshman point guard nailed a 3-pointer in the final minute of Azusa Pacific’s quarterfinal win against Cal Poly Pomona, and she also made the triple that gave Azusa Pacific its first lead of the game at the end of the second quarter.
Azusa Pacific never trailed again until Thompson’s go-ahead 3-pointer with three seconds left in the game. The Cougars led by as much as seven points early in the fourth quarter, but the Alaska Anchorage defense was giving Azusa Pacific all sorts of problems, holding the Cougars to just two points in the first eight minutes of the period.
Daylee Hanson broke the scoring drought with a free throw and then scored a lay-up on an assist from Savanna Hanson to take a 62-60 lead. After getting a stop, Azusa Pacific winded down the shot clock before Daylee Hanson took a 3-pointer that Alaska Anchorage rebounded to get the ball with no shot clock left and a two-point deficit.
Nieto led Azusa Pacific’s offense with 15 points, scoring all of her points on 3-pointers, going 5 for 7.
Laura Pranger and Daylee Hanson, who was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, each added 14 points. For the second game in a row, Pranger also had six blocks to lead the Cougar defense that held the Seawolves to a 34.2 field-goal percentage.