Forty minutes were not enough to decide the game between the KSU Owls women’s basketball team and the Southern Polytechnic State Hornets on Friday night. The game was sent into overtime by SPSU’s Ashlie Billingslea with a fade-away three-pointer as the clock ran down to 0.7 seconds, tying the game at 66. The game was a tight contest the whole way through. There were several times where it looked as if KSU would pull away, at one point leading by 12 midway through the first half, but they just could not shake the Hornets.
The first half was littered with fouls, 16 in total, 11 of which belonged to SPSU. This put two SPSU players in foul trouble. Christa Moore and Alexandria Prince both had three. The second half started with some good defense by the Owls and hard-nosed offense. A block by Sametria Gideon and rebound by Bria Young led to a spin-into-the- lane layup by KSU leading scorer Bria Young. Some good shooting and defense by Sametria Gideon and Shadelly Guzman, allowed KSU to push its lead out to nine before allowing another SPSU bucket. The Hornets didn’t get their first points of the half until 14:56, after a jumper by Ashlie Billinslea, to make it 42-35.
The teams then exchanged buckets after a hard drive-in by KSU’s Sametria Gideon (10 points, 6 rebounds, one block, two steals). With 12:35 remaining in the game, freshman Shadelly Guzman made a nice move inside to get the lay-in to push the score to 46-37. Shadelly had a great first game on defense and offense, scoring 14 points along with seven assists and two steals. Guzman also had a few ankle-breaking moves to get past the SPSU defense. Guzman admitted, after the game, that the first game jitters were there at the start. “I was very nervous at the beginning, but after a while everything just came natural,” Guzman said. Even with the jitters, Guzman managed to play a very solid first game as an Owl.
Several fouls and turnovers against kept both teams from scoring between 11:52 and 10:00. Then SPSU’s Ashlie Billingslae (24 points, two rebounds, seven assists, two steals) connected on both free throws to make the score 48-40. After an arching three by Hornets guard Sarah Ogoke, the teams traded baskets until sophomore KSU guard Nicole Adams hit a clutch three to make it 53-47 with 6:29 left in the game. After a hard fought layup by SPSU’s Quentessa Bullock, preseason A-Sun All- Conference selection, Kristina Wells, hit one of two free throws to up the KSU lead to five. Wells, who had a monster night (16 points, 11 rebounds, five assists, and three steals), looks to pickup where she left off from last year after a stellar freshman season.
After two big rejections by KSU center Christine Wylie and a missed jumper by Adams, SPSU’s Erica Turner got the layup and one. She then converted the free throw to tie it up at 56 with just 3:23 left. Kristina Wells had some slick moves to get into the lane and hit the lay-in to make it 58-56 with three minutes left on the clock. The Owls then gave up a jumper to SPSU to tie it back up. KSU fought back with another Wells layup and two more free throws from Gideon, surging the lead to 62-58, but with just over two minutes left Erica Turner got the inbound pass from Billingslea and laid it in for two. Sloppy play almost led to another two points for the Hornets, but excellent two- on-one defense by Shadellay Guzman kept the score at 62-60.
Guzman had a chance to put it to a four-point lead with 1:23 left, but only hit one of her two free throws to make it 63-60. That left the window open for SPSU to keep in the game and with 1:06 left, and they did just that. SPSU’s Christa Moore got her only points of the night off a three-pointer to tie it up. The Owls then slowed down the pace and got a solid layup from Gideon to go up two with just 37 ticks left on the clock. KSU’s Chantel Kennedy stepped up the defense with a crucial block to keep SPSU from lighting up the board, but when Guzman went to the line to ice the game, the free throw bug hit the Owls. Guzman went 0 for 2 from the line giving SPSU the ball back with 18 seconds remaining. The Owl defense stood tall and Kristina Wells got the ball and went to the charity stripe to put the game away. But the basketball fate had other plans; Wells hit only one of her two free throws leaving a glimmer of hope for the Hornets. And then it happened. With less than a second left in the game Billingslae hit a fade away trey to tie it up. After the game, first year head coach Nitra Perry said that she was preaching poise to her players prior to the overtime period.
“I was thinking it was zero- zero, that’s what I told the players, that we needed to be poised,” Perry said. “That was one of our key things that we wanted to talk, we wanted to block out, and we wanted to stay poised throughout the game. We all knew it was going to be a competitive game. And big time players make big time shots, and I consider that kid a big time player. I think she’ll be one of the better kids we play, even in conference.”
After the forty minutes of regulation, the two teams amassed 41 total personal fouls, including a foul out by SPSU’s Sarah Ogoke. The two teams were within a few percentage points of each other in almost every statistical category.
With the score still tied with 2:30 left in overtime, Guzman made yet another big defensive play with a steal that led to a 3-0 breakaway that she took to the rim herself for the lay in to put KSU up 72-70. The Owls would maintain the lead for the remainder of the game, thanks to good defense from Wylie and Wells, along with a few clutch shots. The Owls would go on to win 79-75. After the game Coach Nitra Perry felt that the close overtime game would prove key later in the season.
“I thought it was huge, just giving them that game experience,” Perry said. “I’ll have something to draw back from, even when we get to December-January. While today’s game doesn’t go towards the standings, it will definitely be a building block for the team to go off all year.”
The Owls head to Tennessee next weekend to face off in the WNIT against MTSU.
