LAKELAND, Fla. – The Lee women's basketball team saw its season come to end on Friday evening as the Tampa Spartans dominated the post in charging past the Lady Flames, 72-63 in the opening round of the NCAA Division II National Tournament.
The Spartans, the fifth-seed in the South Region, shot a blistering 60 percent from the field (27 of 45) led by 21 points and 12 rebounds from forward Dori Nagy, an all-south region second team selection.
The fourth-seeded Lady Flames trailed by just six points at the half after ending the second quarter with a 7-0 run, capped off by a Taylor Boggess triple.
Tampa opened things up against the Lady Flames in the third quarter however. The Spartans went 9 of 14 from the field while limiting Lee to just 6 of 17 in pushing a six-point lead to a 15-point advantage. The Lady Flames fell behind by 20 early in the fourth before cutting the deficit to nine before running out of time.
"We knew that we were still in the game at the half and really hadn't played close to our best basketball," said senior forward Tori Lentz. "Unfortunately we weren't able to get many stops in the third quarter and they were able to stretch the lead."
Abby Bertram kept the Lady Flames fighting as she finished her sensational junior season with 25 points and five rebounds. Bertram landed on the all-south region team earlier this week.
"We battled and that's what this team does but I think we got a bit demoralized in the third quarter because we weren't able to get the stops we needed to climb back into the game," remarked senior guard Jenna Scoggins.
Tampa did most of their damage in the paint scoring 38 points. The Spartans held a 37-34 advantage on the glass.
"I think we could have done a better job of stepping into the post and taking some charges to try and disrupt their timing but they have very good post play and took a lot of high-percentage shots tonight," noted senior forward Anna Woodford.
"Hats off to Tampa. They played unbelievable today. They outplayed us and deserve to move on. We are disappointed with the outcome of the game but we ran into a team that just played better than us tonight," said Lee head coach Marty Rowe. "They got extremely comfortable early on with great play from Nagy and Tyghter and attacked the rim and went right at us."
Boggess had 11 points and four rebounds while Haley Schubert finished her freshman campaign with 11 points.
Staja Tyghter added 16 points and nine boards for the Florida club. Kris Nelson played the full 40 minutes scoring 14 points and grabbing six rebounds from her guard position.
"The leadership, maturity and unselfishness of our seniors (Lentz, Scoggins, Woodford) is what made this a great and special year that I don't think many people thought we would have with the loss of three 1,000-point scorers from last year's team," said Rowe fighting back tears. "These three don't get the credit they deserve because it may not always show up in the box score just how valuable and special they are to me and our team. We were able to do some things this year, like winning conference championship that I didn't even think we might be able to accomplish because of the leadership of these three outstanding players. I'm always going to be grateful for what they did for our basketball program."
Lee finishes the year at 25-7. Tampa improves to 22-8 and will face the top-seeded Florida Southern Mocs tomorrow evening at 7 p.m. in the south region semifinals.
