Box Score In the eyes of Wayland Baptist coach
Alesha Robertson-Ellis, there's no such thing as a "good loss." Thursday's setback to seventh-ranked Oklahoma Baptist might come pretty close, though.
Two days after that disappointing loss to the Lady Bison, Robertson-Ellis' Flying Queens responded exactly the way their coach wanted as they closed the regular-season with a gut-check 85-67 win over Mid-America Christian on Saturday afternoon in Hutcherson Center.
"If we're going to learn our lessons, OBU was a good one for it to happen. It's good sometimes to have a wake-up call, and I felt like our girls responded well today," Robertson-Ellis said. "I felt like I had the team mentally prepared (against OBU), but obviously I didn't. But I learned from my mistakes and so did they."
Stephanie Afunugo scored a career-high 26 points,
Iesha Greer added 20, and both posted double-doubles to lead the Queens (18-10, 13-5 SAC).
"It's hard this late in the season to teach game-plan, but you can teach lessons like getting mentally prepared and always getting ready to play," Robertson-Ellis said. "You can't take any nights off in this league, and I felt like they came back and responded well. They came back (Friday) with good attitudes and prepared very well and then came back today and fought."
The win, in which Wayland made 26-of-31 free throws, ended the regular-season for the Flying Queens, who take the No. 3 seed into next week's SAC Tournament that begins Wednesday at Oklahoma City University. Wayland will find out its first-round pairing on Monday night when the final three conference games that were postponed on Saturday due to wintry weather will be played.
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Against MACU (16-11, 9-9), Wayland never trailed after scoring the first eight points of the game. The Flying Queens led by as many as 26 in the first half in what appeared to be a runaway, but it got interesting down the stretch.
The Lady Evangels closed the gap to 46-28 at halftime then slowly kept coming back after intermission. MACU pulled to within six on three occasions with chances to cut it to 4, but Wayland regrouped and ended the game with a flourish.
It was 60-54 with 8½ minutes remaining when the Flying Queens started knocking down free throws.
Laura Castillo, Greer, Afunugo and
LaTericka Anderson took turns hitting two foul shots apiece, but the Lady Evangels were still hanging around, trailing 68-60 with 5:24 to go.
That's when Wayland shifted into another gear.
The Flying Queens outscored MACU 13-2 and once again pulled away, this time for good. Castillo, Greer, Anderson and
Shawna Monreal all contributed points during that stretch, which ended with Wayland up by 19 points, 81-62, with 1:24 showing.
"When MACU gets hot, they're scary. They can go on big-time streaks," Robertson-Ellis said. "When they did that we needed to relax and play like we know how. It's very easy when things are going south to beat yourself, but our team regrouped, calmed down, and played like we know how."
Wayland missed only five of 31 free throws, or 84 percent, with Afunugo going a perfect 12-of-12 from the stripe for almost half of her 26 points, 18 of which came in the first half.
"Stephanie was fired up, and I think she's at her best like that," Robertson-Ellis said.
Afunugo and Greer both had 10 rebounds, giving Afunugo her sixth double-double of the season and Greer her team-leading eighth.
Castillo added 16 points and Monreal 13, while Anderson pulled down had eight rebounds, seven steals and six points.
"We had a lot of obstacles today, from what happened (against OBU) to the other team trying to get under our skin to some calls not going our way. But the girls did a nice job of overcoming all of that," Robertson-Ellis said. "A couple of times they could have lost their composure, but they didn't. Our girls were mature about it and responded to that well."
Seniors Greer and Anderson were honored prior to playing their final games in the Hutch.
MACU was led in scoring by Alliyah Spatafora's 15 points, Alexia Kelley's 14, and Shakayla Love's 10. Kelley had 13 rebounds while Tierra Brown had 11.
Robertson-Ellis likes where the Flying Queens are going into the post-season.
"We're still in a pretty good position right now going into the (SAC) tournament. We can do some good things if we're mentally prepared.
"Every game counts, and need to expect to win every single game we play. I don't think there's going to be an easy game. From here on out it's about being mentally and physical tough. Everybody's tired, everybody's hurting, you just have to be mentally tough.
"It comes down to who wants it the most."
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