ODU Women Rally But Fall Just Short In 80-77 Loss to Coastal Carolina

By Harry Minium

NORFOLK, Va. – The Old Dominion women’s basketball team staged a dramatic rally in the final three minutes, trimming an eight-point Coastal Carolina lead to three, and had a chance to send the game into overtime at the buzzer.

But a Simaru Fields three-point shot bounced twice on the rim and then rolled out, and Coastal escaped with an 80-77 victory Wednesday at Chartway Arena.

The game matched two of the Sun Belt Conference’s better teams. ODU (11-5 overall, 3-1 Sun Belt) and Coastal (12-2, 3-1) are tied for third in the conference.

Fields missed the final shot, but didn’t miss much else. The 5-foot-6 transfer from Gulf Coast Community College led ODU with 18 points and added four assists in 31 minutes of playing time. Delisha Milton-Jones, ODU’s head coach, designed a play to free Fields up for the last shot.

“I’ll take her taking that shot five more times,” Milton-Jones said. “That’s the type of player she is. She’s a gamer and she loves the big moment.

“That’s why we drew up the play for her to have the ball in her hands. She had a good look at the rim. Under normal circumstances, she’d knock that down.”

The game ended with some controversy. With 32.7 seconds left and Coastal holding a five-point lead, ODU’s En’Dya Buford picked off a pass and fell to the floor. She signaled for a timeout, as a Coastal player pounced on her, but the referees called a jump ball.

Milton-Jones said she yelled three times for a timeout but that the referees apparently did not hear her.

“They told me they didn’t see it,” Milton-Jones said. “It’s not about seeing it. They were standing six feet from me. I didn’t know what else I could do.

“If I come on the court to call a timeout, I get in trouble.

“It’s unfortunate. We got the steal. We did what we’re supposed to do.”

But she said in the long run, that one play did not lose the game.

“We did enough on our own (to lose the game) in terms of giving uncontested threes and allowing them to score with ease around the rim," she said. "They scored 42 points in the paint (to 34 for ODU) and a lot of those were uncontested layups because of mishaps on the defensive end.”

ODU had won five in a row and was coming off road wins at Southern Miss and ULM. The fatigue from the long road trip may have shown in the early going as the Monarchs fell far behind.

ODU missed 10 of its first 11 shots and trailed 9-2 in the first quarter and 25-14 early in the second quarter.

But then the Monarchs outscored the Chanticleers, 19-7, over the final eight minutes of the first half and led 33-32, at the half.

ODU twice expanded the lead to eight in the third quarter before hitting a cold streak in which Coastal again retook the lead.

“Fatigue,” Milton-Jones responded when asked what happened during that stretch, adding that several players have been battling sickness.

ODU then retook the momentum in the game’s final four minutes.

Brenda Fontana led the comeback, scoring eight of her 15 points in the final four minutes, including a three-point shot with 7.7 seconds left that trimmed the Coastal lead to two, 79-77.

The Monarchs fouled Kristin Williams, who missed the first shot and made the second to give Coastal an 80-77 lead.

With a foul to give, Coastal immediately fouled Fields with five seconds left.

Fields then worked her way open, and stepped back to take a three-pointer that she thought was going into the basket.

“It looked like it was going in,” she said, then after a short pause, added: “It’s tough."

Kelsey Thompson, the transfer from South Alabama, added 14 points for ODU while Camryn Hill, the transfer from Hampton, added 11 points off the bench in just 16 minutes of playing time.

Senior Simone Cummington had eight points and 10 rebounds.

ODU made eight of nine free throws, but had less than half the 22 free throw attempts taken by Coastal.

“It makes me good to see our bench, or our second starers, are coming in and contributing the way we expected them to,” Milton-Jones said. “We built this roster in a way where we wouldn’t have any dip in play whenever we put people into the game.

“For them to come in and hold their own like that, it shows me they’re doing their job.”

ODU hosts Marshall Saturday at 2 p.m. in the second game of a four-game home stand. The Monarchs will host App State on Wednesday, Jan. 15, and then Texas State on Saturday, Jan. 18.