When the buzzer sounded last night in Cousens Gym, both teams were stunned.
The five Jumbos on the floor stared up at the scoreboard in disbelief, while the Wheaton Lyons celebrated senior Kim McCormack's last-second lay-up that handed them a come-from-behind 63-62 upset over a Tufts team that had been rolling over the last week and a half.
The loss snapped Tufts' four-game winning streak, and handed the team its sixth loss of the season.
After coach Carla Berube's team gained possession of the ball with 27.5 seconds remaining in the second frame, senior Tayrn Miller-Stevens crossed the half-court line and reversed the ball to sophomore Kim Moynihan, who passed it off to senior Valerie Krah behind the right side of the arc. Taking advantage of a mismatch on defense, Krah drove to the hoop and kissed a lay-up off the glass for a 62-61 advantage with seconds left on the clock.
"It just happened that Val got the ball on the outside and was able to take her man," Berube said. "There were several mismatches all night, so whenever our guards had a forward on them, they were able to take it to the hole, and anytime there were guards defending our forwards, we were able to dump it inside. And I think Val had a mismatch and was able to take her girl to the hoop."
Still, there was enough time for the Lyons to call a timeout and draw-up a final play.
Wheaton seemed frazzled on the ensuing inbound, unable to get the ball over the three-point line for the first several seconds. Lyon senior Kim McCormack grabbed the ball from junior Becky Aitchison, penetrated against Tufts' defense, and countered Krah's lay-up with her own, releasing the ball just as the buzzer sounded.
"It was just bad help defense," Berube said. "We had to help on the drive, and we didn't get a rotation down on help defense, and they had a wide-open lay-up. It was great execution by them and bad help defense on our part. We let them in the lane and they made a great play."
The dramatic ending was nothing new for two teams who played to the final second of last season's Dec. 3 showdown, in which Aitchison hit a three as time expired to lift her team to a 62-59 victory and hand Tufts its first loss of the season.
The Jumbos squandered all of their opportunities to shift the outcome in their favor this time around. Four times the Jumbos led by seven points, and four times, Wheaton crawled right back into the game.
Laura Jasinski sunk a pair of free throws at the 10:45 mark in the second half, increasing the lead to 47-40, but Wheaton responded with a 10-2 run to put itself ahead 50-49.
"They were doubling and tripling down low, and we were having a hard time once we got it in there to get it back out to the guards," sophomore Kim Moynihan said. "We just didn't do what we needed to do. I don't know what the cause was, but we didn't do our jobs. We did not make consistent plays, we should have strung along some sort of run at some point in the game, and we didn't have a single run in the game. It shouldn't have been a close game like it was at the end."
As has been a theme throughout the season, the Jumbos looked lethargic from the tip-off, remaining scoreless almost two-and-a-half minutes into the first half. Wheaton pulled out to an early 12-6 lead, but Tufts ultimately took control of the game by the end of the half, building a 33-29 lead behind a number of well timed three pointers. Krah's 17 points, nine from behind the arc, kept the momentum in her team's favor.
But Berube's team never put the Lyons to rest, allowing a physically inferior opponent to hang around. With only one player over six-feet tall, Wheaton was clearly at a disadvantage, but the Jumbos' inability to capitalize ultimately came back to haunt them.
"We were flat," junior Jenna Gomez said. "We've never been that dead. In warm-ups we were just flat. We've been playing well the last couple of games, but today, for some reason, we were just awful. We just didn't come ready to play today. I kind of think we played down to them. We thought we were going to win. I'm actually surprised that we only lost by one point."
Tufts will have to pick up the pieces this Friday as it heads into the final stretch of its schedule. The team has six games remaining - all against NESCAC opponents - and if it has any intention of maintaining its pristine conference record, the squad has to get back on track quickly.
The Jumbos will host Conn. College on Friday evening before squaring off against a pesky Wesleyan crew in a matinee on Saturday at Cousens.
