Sports
The Daily Campus
Tuesday, March 2, 2010 •
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
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MEN’S BASKETBALL
One more to go By DORI SHOCKLEY Staff Writer dshockley@smu.edu
With one game left in the regular season, the SMU women’s basketball team is on a hot streak. The Mustangs defeated both the University of Central Florida Knights on Thursday, Feb. 25 and the Southern Miss Golden Eagles on Saturday, Feb. 27. After such a successful weekend, SMU maintained their No. 3 rank in Conference USA with nine wins and six losses. The team remains tied with the University of Houston but is ahead thanks to a better overall record. Along with a critical 69-61 victory against UCF, Mustang point guard senior Jillian Samuels had even more reason to celebrate after Thursday’s game. It was during that game that Samuels hit the biggest three-pointer of her career at SMU. She now holds the all-time 3-pointer record with a career total of 238. Head coach Rhonda Rompola dubbed this record the “big shot of the day” when speaking with smumustangs. com. The same players featured all season continued to impress. Junior Haley Day earned her second doubledouble this season with 13 points and 11 rebounds. Senior Brittany Gilliam chipped in as well, putting up 13 points for the Mustangs. Going into the locker room at halftime, SMU held an eight-point lead over the Knights. The second half was more evenly matched and the Knights managed to tie the game 35-35. Then, with 16:25 left in the second half, UCF stole the lead. It took SMU nearly 10 minutes to regain the upper hand. The Mustangs then had a quick turn around, hosting Southern Miss less than 48 hours after their previous victory. The Mustangs were able to build a much bigger lead on Saturday afternoon and finished victoriously, 8166. The same hot shots that have been putting up points all season came through again against the Golden Eagles. Gilliam had 19 points while Day lead the team with 22. Samuels added 15, while sophomore Samantha Mahnesmith had an additional 10. Heidi Brandenburg scored 11 points for the Mustangs, which is a career-high for her. Moody Coliseum will only see one more regular season match with SMU hosting Tulsa on Wednesday, March 3 at 7:00 p.m. The Mustangs will look to redeem a loss suffered earlier this season to the Golden Hurricanes. This game
MICHAEL DANSER/The Daily Campus
SMU center Papa Dia, who scored a season-high 31 points during Saturday’s game, contests a rebound against Houston guard Kelvin Lewis.
Turning the corner By NICOLE JACOBSEN Senior Staff Writer njacobse@smu.edu
SPENCER EGGERS/The Daily Campus
SMU forward Haley Day going for a layup in Saturday’s game against the University of Southern Miss.
will also serve as a time to honor the seniors graduating from SMU this year. The team will say goodbye to their three captains: Gilliam, Samuels and Alice Severin.
TRACK AND FIELD
Mustangs place 8th By STEPHEN LU Sports Editor sjlu@smu.edu
The SMU track and field team participated in the Conference USA Track and Field Indoor Championships this weekend in Houston and took eighth place with several strong performances from the Mustangs’ top athletes. Sophomore Simone Du Toit led the way for SMU, capturing first place in the shot put with an NCAA Provisional mark of 16.55m. This is an improvement from last year, when Du Toit finished second in the same event with a throw of 14.63m. Sophomore Victoria Leks, who took first in the high jump at the Iowa State Classic two weeks ago with a mark of 1.73m, came through with another strong performance. This time, her mark was 1.70m, which was good for seventh place. Junior Kristine Eikrem-Engeset, one of SMU’s top runners during fall cross-country, finished with two top10 finishes in her events, the mile run and the 3000-meter
run. In the mile, she crossed the finish line with a time of 4:54.37. She finished just four seconds behind the winner, Becky Wade from Rice University, 4:50.11. She took ninth place in the 3000 with a final time of 9:56.18. Sophomore Amber Evans was another top-10 finisher. She took ninth place in the 400-meter dash. Her final time was 57.41, which was a slight drop from her preliminary time of 56.59. She finished fourth in the prelims. The Mustangs took seventh in the 4x400 meter relay. The team, composed of junior Alexandria Smith, sophomore Alex Pegram, sophomore Amber Evans and sophomore Ebony Cuington, finished with a final time of 3:52.39. SMU did even better in the Women’s Distance Medley, taking second place after being edged out by the Tulsa squad by just .6 seconds. The team, made up of freshman Sara Sjokvist, Pegram, freshman Mary Alenbratt and Eikrem-Engeset, finished in 11:37.95. The team will take to the field again on March 6 at the Notre Dame Last Chance.
WOMEN’S TENNIS
SMU improves to 12-1 on season By BRITTANY LEVINE Associate Sports Editor blevine@smu.edu
It has now been eight straight wins for the SMU women’s tennis team after they beat Louisville, 5-0, on Saturday and Missouri, 4-1, over the weekend. The No. 21 Mustangs are now 121 this season after their play at the Green Tennis Center in Columbia, Mo. In the match against Louisville, SMU won all three matches to earn
the doubles point. They were also perfect in singles, winning four of six while the No. 5 and 6 positions went unfinished. SMU freshman Edyta Cieplucha had an impressive comeback in the No. 4 singles spot. After facing match point, she won 11 straight games and won the match (2-6, 7-5, 6-0). The Mustangs also earned the doubles point against Missouri on Sunday. With her win at the No. 1 singles spot, sophomore Marta Lesniak
improved her record to 11-0 in dual matches. She defeated Missouri’s Jamie Mera (6-2, 6-4) and is ranked No. 92. Aleksandra Malyarchikova also improved to 11-0 in dual meets with her No. 2 singles win over the Tigers’ Mallory Weber (6-2, 6-4). Cieplucha won again at No. 4 singles and now has a record of 8-0 for the year. The Mustangs next match is March 6 against a formidable No. 33 Texas in Austin.
MEN’S TENNIS
Mustangs blown away by Gophers By BRITTANY LEVINE Associate Sports Editor blevine@smu.edu
The SMU men’s tennis team lost to the University of Minnesota, 6-1, at the Turpin Tennis Center Sunday. Playing under windy conditions, the No. 43 Gophers managed to take five of the six singles matches. SMU’s sole victory came from senior Chris Hooshyar, who holds the No. 5 singles spot, 6-1, 6-1. Junior Artem
Baradach, playing in the No. 1 singles spot, nearly upset his opponent, No. 37 Sebastian George, 6-4, 7-6 (7-5). The Gophers also took the doubles point, winning two out of three doubles matches. However, the Mustangs made sure the wins did not come easy for Minnesota. The No. 1 doubles duo, juniors Darren Walsh and Adham el-Effendi, took their opponents to a tiebreaker but could not pull out the victory, falling 9-8 (7-4).
Hooshyar and Baradach, ranked No. 3 in doubles and nearly got a win, but play was stopped due to time. Their match was called with the Mustangs only a single game from victory, 7-4. The Mustangs now have a record of 6-5. This is the first loss for the team at home this semester, and it was their first loss in five matches. SMU will play against the No. 4 Texas Longhorns (11-1) in Austin March 2.
Matt Doherty came to Dallas in 2006 in hopes of turning the SMU men’s basketball team into a winning program. In four seasons Doherty has posted a 47-72 record as the team stumbled through league play and scrapped for wins outside the realm of Conference USA. Four years later, the team has turned a corner, beating the University of Houston 94-83 over the weekend in Moody Coliseum. The Mustang’s first win against Houston since joining C-USA also marks SMU’s second-highest point total in league play. Back at the .500 mark, the Mustangs (14-14,7-7) find themselves in sixth place in league play. Houston, previously tied for sixth place with SMU, slipped into seventh place at 16-12 and 6-8. “It was a huge game for us, not only beating Houston, but climbing the ladder in the standings was pretty exciting,” Doherty said. “We haven’t been in this type of position before and I think it really motivates the guys to come to practice and work hard and play hard.” It looked like the game would be an easy win for the Mustangs; Papa Dia started the game with a slam-dunk off the tip. Dia and Rodney Clinkscales posted careerhigh numbers from the field. The Cougars held on, hitting seven of their nine three-point attempts early in the first half. There was no clear leader untiljust moments before halftime.
Starting his sixth game in his first season at SMU, Clinkscales finished the night with 12 points, a personal best in league play for the Dodge City Community College transfer. Clinkscales’ effort also helped lead to the third game that SMU has had four or more players reach double figures in four games. Houston managed to pull ahead by six with 1:11 left at the end of the first half: 39-33. After losing to Houston once this season already, the Mustangs refused to go down in the second half without a fight. “We haven’t beat Houston since I’ve been here,” Dia said. “When Houston comes in, they just roll in and beat us by 20 or 25 and go home.” Dia felt that the Mustangs had a good chance of beating them this year, and said “it was exciting to beat them at home.” “I challenged [the team] a little bit to keep their chin[s] up and work hard,” Doherty said, promising that “things would turn around, and they certainly did. We did it from balanced scoring and taking care of the ball in the second half.” The Mustangs shot 68 percent from the field in the second half to help them gain the lead, one that didn’t come without a fight. A bombardment of three-pointers from Derek Williams, Robert Nyakundi and Mouhammad Faye helped the Mustangs gain a seven-point lead with 4:03 left. With just under four minutes left, Dia made up a missed rebound by responding with a block under the net to give SMU their final burst of momentum for what Doherty calls
another signature win. Feeling their performance at Houston was tentative, Doherty told the players pre-game that “they needed to be the aggressor[s]” this time. “I especially challenged [Dia] as much as anybody.” Dia, in the best game of his career, posted a career-high 31 points, the third most by any SMU player in a CUSA game. Dia’s previous record was a 23-point contribution in the team’s win over Memphis in January. The 6foot-9-inch forward from Senegal also recorded his eighth double-double of the season with 12 rebounds. Faye recorded his second doubledouble of the season with 11 points and 10 boards, marking the sixth time in the last seven games that Faye has reached double figures in scoring, and his third time this season to collect double figures in rebounds. After playing 40 minutes for the ninth time this season, Williams completed the group of players to post double digits with 18 points. He now has played over 35 minutes in 13 consecutive games, scoring 15 or more points in 17 straight games. “In the first eight to ten seconds, we were just aiming to hit a lot of shots and the ball just went in the hole for us,” Williams said. This far in the season, “we’re all familiar with how each other plays and we just go out there and have fun.” The Mustangs play in their final two games of the season next week starting with Tulsa (20-9, 9-5) on the road March 3. The Mustangs will be back in action in Moody Coliseum on March 6 to host the Marshall Herd (22-7, 10-4) at 7 p.m.