WINONA LAKE - Despite entering the NCCAA Championship Tournament with a 9-23 record, the Grace College Lady Lancers gave the top-seeded Emmanuel College Lions all they could handle Thursday.
Trailing 59-48 with just over three minutes to play, Grace (9-24) fought back, but eventually succumbed when a three-pointer by freshman Jamie Westness was just off at the buzzer, resulting in a 60-57 loss.
"Anytime you come to a tournament like this, and you're going to play the host team, you can anticipate that they're not going to go away," Emmanuel (18-13) coach Mike Bona said. "To their credit, they kept playing and kept playing hard."
Grace got a bid into the tournament by serving as the host at the Orthopaedic Capital Center, but the girls let it be known that they weren't there just to let other teams play on their floor.
"We still have two games left," Grace coach Scott Blum said of the tournament format. "Our motto this year was, 'If we're in it, we're going to win it.' We didn't want to just show up and be the host. Unfortunately, we can't win first (place) now. We can hold our heads high and show up tomorrow."
Grace will face Trinity International today at 3 p.m., a team that fell to Palm Beach Atlantic Thursday. Emmanuel squares off with Palm Beach at 7 p.m. tonight in the semifinals, which will follow the Mount Vernon Nazarene/Mid-America Christian game, slated for 5 p.m.
Prior to any thoughts of the second day, Grace's sole concern was advancing in the winner's bracket, but inexperience showed down the stretch, with missed free throws.
"That's been the story all year - as far as having nine freshmen, two sophomores, a junior and our one senior," Blum said. "We play in a great conference, and sometimes we get in ourselves in a hole, where we're down by nine or eight, and we have to use so much energy coming back. Then, we just run a little bit out of gas or make that young, inexperienced mistake."
Emmanuel pushed its lead to double digits in the opening half, and took a 34-24 lead into the half.
In the second half, Grace opened on a 10-1 run, which pulled the home team to within 35-34 with 16:28 to play. However, Emmanuel responded with a 9-0 run of its own, pushing its lead to 44-34 with 12:36 remaining.
Still behind 59-48 with 3:25 to play, Grace held Emmanuel scoreless for over three minutes. During that span, the Lancers scored nine points, but just couldn't get over the hump.
"Emmanuel played a great game," Blum said. "We just couldn't stop their athleticism. Offensive rebounds, they average 15 a game and got 17 tonight. That was the key. We talked about it for two days in practice."
The most athletic of the Lions was sophomore Ashley Jackson, who scored 17 points and grabbed 11 rebounds.
"We've beaten some of the better teams in the nation, over the course of the year, but we've lost to some teams that weren't very good," Bona said. "We're capable of playing really good basketball. We just need a win or two to get going. The win tonight might just be the win we need to keep going."
The Lancers were led by junior Demetria Eley's 14 points and nine rebounds, with eight of her points coming in the first seven minutes.
"We were going in to her, then she had to come out, and we kind of got out of our rhythm," Blum said of Eley, who scored all of Grace's points until freshman Kendall Withered hit a bucket with 11:16 remaining in the first half.
Freshman Kayla Skaggs scored 13 points for Grace, followed by sophomore Kiera Gray's 10. Westness posted four steals in the losing effort.
Tournament action gets under way today at 1 p.m. when Oakland City and Nyack College meet at 1 p.m.
