CIAA WOMEN
Norfolk State. ? ? ?
Norfolk State. _
And...Norfolk State Again.
RICHMOND - It's getting so that the
CIAA women's tournament results are
beginning to sound like a broken record.
Norfolk State.
Norfolk State.
And . . . Norfolk State.
The Spartannettes have become the
first team to win three of the tournament
championships in a iow^but neithef-of the
first two were nearly as trying as the third:
a 78-77 Houdini escape number Norfolk
State pulled on St. Augustine's.
"When a team plays for 40 minutes,
you win," said Norfolk State coach James
Sweat. "If we'd played for 39 minutes, we
would not have won."
It's true. Norfolk State kept trying to
pull away from undersized St.
Augustine's. And the Spartannettes game
plan of getting the ball inside to 6-1
Hycynthia Spells and 6-2 Stephanie
Palmer would work for a little while, then
stall for a little while. Palmer's being in
constant foul trouble didn't help, but nei
ther did St. Augustine's Carolyn Brown,
named CIAA player of the year for the
second straight season.
Brown scored 15 of her team's first
19 points and looked to be on her way to
perhaps her best game ever in the best
time to have it.
A junior transfer from Columbia,
S.C., Brown had been denied at every turn
by Norfolk State. But she was more than
ready to make good on her final chance to
exorcize her personal demons from Vir- ?
ginia.
* But she picked up her third foul with
8:08 left in ?uc first half, her team down
28-20. 3uT i tlmeralso was sitting out.
And St. Augustine's, even without its star,
began to fight back.
By halftine, Norfolk State's lead was
38-36. When Brown returned with 13:42
left, Norfolk led 49-48. This was going
down, as the television folks say, to the
wire.
There was one brief spell when the
Spartannettes tried to end it, taking a 70
61 lead after scoring 10 straight points, but
Brown gave up an assist and hit a three,
and so much for that.
St. Augustine's finally caught and
past Norfolk State with 1:14 left when
freshman Rachi lie Pierce hit a spinning
layin. St. Augustine's led 75-74. With 51
seconds left. Devonia Dixon hit two for St.
Aug. that made the lead 77-74. Fourteen
ticks later, St. Augustine's didn't foul Lisa
Rice and let her score for the Spartan
nettes. That layup cut the St. Aug. lead to
one, 77-76.
Brown, though, missed her free throw
with 26 seconds left. ~
Norfolk coach Jim Sweat called time
out.
The play he designed was to go inside
to one of the twin towers. Spells or
Palmer, but St. Aug. fouled Jennine Tanks
before she could get the ball inside.
Tanks would go to the line with a
chance to give her team the lead.
"The only thing that was on my mind
was a three-peat," Tanks said. "We'd
come this far, and we could make C1AA
history tonight."
If only she could make these free
throws.
"If there was one girl that I was going
to pick to shoot those free throws, I'd pick
Jennine," Sweat said. "She's won every
big. game for us this year. There was no
doubt in my mind when she went to the
line."
Tanks cleanly hit both of them, and
now the Spartannettes were 8 seconds
away from history. _
But they knew what was coming: a
freight train named Carolyn Brown.
"We all knew that they'd want to get
it to Brown," said Spartannette guard
DeShonna Anderson, "and we all said if
she gets a shot off, she'll get it off with a
hand in her face."
Well, St. Aug.'s got the ball to
Brown, their All-American who averages
29 points and 7 steals per game. To this
point, she'd scored 21 points. And Brown
flew up the left side of the court, passing
Sweat, who was yelling at his team to stop
her.
Brown passed by her coach, Beverly
Downing, who held her hands over her
mouth in anxious anticipation.
Finally Brown arrived about 13 feet
from her basket and pulled up for a shot.
Two Norfolk players threw their arms in
the air. One appeared to hit Brown when
she let the ball go. No foul called.
The ball hit the backboard and
Lisa Rice , 12, goes for a rebound during Spartanette's remarkable tour
nament bid.
bounced off the front of the rim. Brown
grabbed the rebound. Two seconds left. A
Norfolk player appeared to again foul her.
No whistle was heard until the ball landed
out of bounds. There was one second left
on the clock when the whistle blew. But
the buzzer sounded, and the referee looked
at each other, bewildered, and ran off the
court.
But what about that one second?
"Obviously the whistle blew," Down
ing said. "I thought one second was on the
clock, but everyone ran on the court, and
the refs left the court, so maybe I was just
wishing."
She paused.
"But there was a whistle blown and a
foul designated."
Brown stood outside the interview
area and was hugged by a friend.
She'll never know what she could ve
done. And what she did do was almost
enough.
Almost means not quite, though, so
Norfolk State won again. That broken
record keeps playing.
"All this week, sometimes I felt like
giving up," said Spells, crying. She plays
with a partially separated shoulder that has
a painful habit of popping out of the sock
et. She'll have surgery in the off-season.
"But we're winners," Spell said. "We
don't give up."
Not until the final buzzer sounds.
? By Langston Wertz