Thursday night marked the beginning of the post-season for the No. 2-ranked St. Thomas women’s basketball team, and it did not disappoint. The Tommies (26-0 overall, 18-0 MIAC) cruised past Augsburg College (15-12 overall, 9-9 MIAC) with a convincing 63-39 victory at Schoenecker Arena in the MIAC semifinals.
In a season spearheaded by the seniors on the team, it was junior guard Katie Stone who took charge against the Auggies. Stone finished the game with a game-high 19 points, shooting 7 for 11 from the field and 5 for 9 from beyond the arc. She attributed her success to the team’s depth.
“I think since we have so many players we can go 10-12 deep, and it really helps keep our starters fresh and our players fresh,” Stone said.
Coach Ruth Sinn agreed that depth has been a big part of the Tommies’ success all season and said bench players – along with the team hitting 11 of its 20 3-pointers – were key Thursday.
“We can keep bringing energy with different players,” Sinn said. “Alyssa Favilla came off the bench and did a really great job. Elaine Warner does a great job of bringing that energy and Hannah Hughes hit a big three at the end of the half. I don’t know what we finished with, but I think we had a lot more threes than we normally have.”
The Tommies survived a scare in the middle of the game when guard Jenna Dockter headed to the locker room with an apparent lower-body injury. Dockter has battled serious knee injuries throughout her career and has been one of the team’s senior leaders all season. She returned to the bench shortly after exiting and laughed it off after the game.
“I rolled my ankle again. That’s been a common theme, but it’s fine,” Dockter said.
Dockter shot a perfect 5 for 5 from the floor Thursday and finished with 17 points, second on the team behind Stone, and 2 rebounds. She said the team’s preparation was a big part of the win.
“We knew that Augsburg was going to come out and play a very physical game,” Dockter said. “We knew they were going to go slow on offense and play solid defense. We just tried to play our tempo. We like to push the ball and go inside-out, so those were probably the keys.”
Despite the convincing victory, Sinn was not completely satisfied.
“One of the things I thought we did better was we spaced the floor. When we space the floor we move the ball. We’re very tough to stop because we’ve got a lot of weapons. Unfortunately, we also got a little sloppy with spacing the floor,” Sinn said. “(I’m) disappointed in the amount of turnovers that we had.”
St. Thomas will look to perfect its performance when it hosts Bethel in the MIAC Championship at 3 p.m. Saturday. A win would give the Tommies their fourth consecutive MIAC playoff title – the fifth in six seasons – and an automatic bid into the NCAA Division-III playoffs. If the entire season up to this point has been any indication, the Tommies will be ready.
“We just need to come into each game focused and locked in,” Dockter said. “We had quite a bit of turnovers tonight, so that will definitely be an emphasis tomorrow in practice. Just come in focused and ready to play our style of basketball. It should be fun.”
Andrew Frentz can be reached at fren2218@stthomas.edu.