Lubbock, TX - College of Southern Idaho head coach Randy Rogers remembered all too well having to sit through the first two days of the NJCAA Division I Women's Basketball Championship only to come out flat and fall in the first round.
The Golden Eagles faced the possibility of having to go through that all over again, despite holding a double-digit lead going into the fourth quarter. But the experience from last year carried them through and helped them avoid the upset.
Tylie Jones scored 19 points off the bench, Alyssa Christensen drained a pair of free throws with 10.1 seconds left, and Southern Idaho held off a furious rally by New Mexico Junior College to hold on to a 61-58 victory in the second round of the tournament Friday at the Rip Griffin Center.
"There's one thing about this, and that is that I felt our kids were going to play hard," Southern Idaho head coach Randy Rogers said. "Coming into this, they've done that for me all year long. There are times we go through long stretches without scoring but our defense is always pretty aggressive and pretty impactful on the game. I thought coming into the game that it would be about rebounds and possessions, and we did a good job on the board."
Christensen finished with 12 points and seven boards for the Golden Eagles (30-2), who outrebounded NMJC 35-29 to advance to the quarterfinals Saturday to face either Blinn College or North Dakota State College of Science at 5 p.m.
Playing with a broken finger on her shooting hand didn't faze Jones one bit. At one point in the third quarter she scored eight straight points for the Golden Eagles, and her layup to begin the fourth quarter gave the Golden Eagles their largest lead of the game to that point at 54-41.
"Definitely just playing for my team, for coach, and for CSI," Jones said. "I'm just happy to be here and work hard and do what we've been doing all season and play as a team."
But the 21st-seeded and upset-minded Thunderbirds would not go away without one last-gasp effort. Trailing 57-45 with 7:57 to play, NMJC used a 13-2 run over the next 6 ½ minutes to cut the Southern Idaho lead to one. The Thunderbirds had two chances to take the lead, but Danna Grenald, who had a game-high 23 points, missed a layup with just under a minute to play, and after a Southern Idaho miss, Delma Zita stepped out of bounds under the NMJC basket with 15.4 to play.
Forced to foul, NMJC put Christensen at the free-throw line, and she calmly knocked down the game-clinching pair. Still, the Thunderbirds had one last chance but Duda Raimundo's 3-pointer from the left win bounced off the iron as the buzzer sounded.
Zita added 16 points for the Thunderbirds.
The Golden Eagles, for having to wait through the first two days of the tournament to play, were surprisingly fairly sharp shooting the ball. Southern Idaho finished the first half hitting on 48.3 percent (14- 29) from the field, which was enough to gain control of the game late in the first half.
Tied at 12, Southern Idaho scored seven of the last nine points of the half to lead 19-14, then extended that run to 15-0 with an 8-0 run to start the second quarter. That gave the Golden Eagles a 27-14 lead, forcing the Thunderbirds to chase the rest of the half.
New Mexico did close to within 31-23 late in the second quarter, but a 3-pointer from Christensen helped put the lead back to double digits to start the second half.
Christensen finished with seven points for Southern Idaho while Kali Haizlip led the team with nine.
Grenalld had nine to pace the Thunderbirds.
