Amber Bland scored 16 of her team-high 18 points in the first half and Lamona Smalley came off the bench to add 11 of her 15 in the first 20 minutes as North Carolina A&T rolled to a 76-54 victory over Hampton in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference women’s tournament championship at the Lawrence Joel Coliseum. The Lady Aggies (26-6) receive an automatic bid to next week’s NCAA Tournament. The pairings will be announced on Monday.
The regular season champs sent a message early when they went on a 28-9 run that all but put the game away early. The run was spearheaded by Smalley, a reserve, and Bland, who combined for 27 points. Smalley, a versatile player who normally plays the post, appeared to surprise the Lady Pirates with her ability to put the ball on the floor. She hit on three of her five shots and grabbed five rebounds in only 12 minutes. Bland did most of her damage from long range, connecting 4-of-5 from beyond the arc for 16 points. The tournament outstanding player, Bland at one point scored eight points in a 55-second span that broke the game open.
“It was no secret; we wanted to get off to a great start and the way that you do that is with defense,” said NC A&T head coach Patricia Cage-Bibbs. “We set the tone with our defense and then Lamona came off the bench to give us a big spark. Amber made a big contribution as well. But it was truly a team effort.”
The win was especially sweet for the Lady Aggies, who won the regular season title last season, only to have the tournament title taken away from on a last second shot.
“Last year was a heartbreaker, but we learned from it,” said Bland, who was named the Tournament Most Outstanding Performer. “As seniors, we vowed that we did not want to feel that pain again. This was a lot more than a championship game to us.”
North Carolina A&T continued to put pressure on Hampton in the second half as Taylor James, the regular season Player of the Year, got into the act, scoring 8 of her team’s first 10 points as the Lady Aggies expanded the lead to 23. She finished with 17 points, 14 coming after intermission.
After that loss last year, we’ve been on a mission since Day 1,” said Taylor -James, the 2009 MEAC Player of the Year. “We have a poster in our locker room that says ?Unfinished Business’ to remind us. We have had a target on our backs all season but we responded.”
Hampton (15-16) continued to show its youth and inexperience with turnovers and several missed shots from close range. The Lady Pirates missed 40 of their shot attempts, turned the ball over 24 times and gave the veteran Lady Aggie squad 18 points off their mistakes.
“That is what we do; we like to cause turnovers with our pressure because it creates opportunities for us to get easy baskets,” said Coach Cage-Bibbs, who formerly coached at Hampton, where she had great success. “Because of injuries, we were not able to play our normal pressure so we applied token pressure and it was effective.”
The Lady Pirates were a bit of a surprise, considering the team’s inexperience. Hampton has five freshmen and five sophomores on its roster and it starts three freshmen and a sophomore.
“North Carolina A&T has outstanding senior leadership and talented players,” said Hampton head coach Walter Mebane, who served as head assistant coach under Coach Cage-Bibbs before taking over when she left.
Sharella Lewis of Hampton tied for game-high scoring honors with Bland while Ashlee Finley contributed 12 off the bench. Smalley added 10 rebounds to her double-double and Jaleesa Sams tallied 13.
GAME NOTES: Lamona Smalley (NC A&T), April McBride (Maryland Eastern Shore), Sharella Leslie (Hampton) and Quanneisha Perry (Hampton) and Amber Bland (North Carolina A&T) were named to the all-tournament team. Bland was named Tournament Most Outstanding Player and Head Coach Patricia Cage-Bibbs was named Tournament Outstanding Coach.