Lady Bluejays collapse in second half at Sterling
The Tabor women's team fell to Sterling Saturday, 78-50.
Shooting 36 percent from the field while Tabor's defense held the Warriors to a frigid 29 percent, it was the determining second half that ruined any chance of an upset.
Tabor's shooting dropped off to an icy 23 for 30 on the night and the Warriors heated up to a blistering 59 percent.
The Warriors were just too much down the stretch, prevailing 78-50 after their close call in the first half.
Tabor falls to 9-14 on the season and 5-10 in the KCAC.
First-year coach Rusty Allen and the Bluejays have plenty of reason to smile, though.
They've got blue skies in the forecast with their toughest two teams in the KCAC out of the way.
The remaining five games are against vulnerable teams, unlike Bethany and Sterling have turned out to be.
In its first meeting with the then-third ranked Warriors, Tabor was singlehandedly dismantled by a double-double of 32 points and 13 rebounds by Kristina Barrow.
Barrow again had a double-double with 14 rebounds, but not quite the same damage this time with just 14 points.
Monday, it was a game-high 19 points from Rachel Derstein and 15 from Jara Coles that terrorized Tabor.
Combined, the Bluejays surrendered a 12 for 19 from the floor to the duo with Derstein hitting 7 of 10 at the free throw line.
One of the mysteries about Tabor the last few games has been its perimeter shooting.
The Bluejays have several players that can shoot the trey, such as Carmen Hein, Rachelle Speers, Kathryn Troutt Angela Kroeker and Jessica Prock.
Against the league's two heaviest-hitters in back-to-back games, Tabor has averaged a rancid 18 percent from outside the arc.
And it was only Hein and Kroeker who could find the hoop on a 2 for 12 night from downtown.
It was only Kroeker, Amber McKillip and Speers who scored in double figures with 16, 11 and 10, respectively.
McKillip grabbed a team-high seven rebounds with Kroeker pulling down six.
The Bluejays' rebounding took a hit when their leader Becky Jons, fouled out in the second half. Jons still snagged four to go along with six points as the larger, stronger Warriors outrebounded Tabor, 49-32.
The Bluejays travel to Ottawa today for a 6 p.m. showdown with the Lady Braves.
Tabor returns home Saturday to face Kansas Wesleyan at 5 p.m.
The Bluejays will also be in action Monday night at home against Friends for the Jan. 31 makeup game postponed due to bad weather. Game time is scheduled for 6 p.m.
Bethany
Allen might have been wondering if he wasn't watching the encore presentation of the Bluejays' Dec. 8 fall to the ranked Lady Swedes at home Saturday night.
"It was really kind of a similar game," he said. "The thing we probably did better was handle pressure defense."
Shooting 27 percent from the field will not cut it against Bethany, and the Swedes taught the Bluejays a hard 76-43 lesson.
"The thing that really cost us was we shot the ball poorly," said Allen. "We've been flirting with getting hammered pretty bad because of shooting the ball poorly. Some of the time when we've done that, it was against a team of lesser quality."
The roof came down on Tabor early with the Swedes taking off on 8-0 run to start the game.
Kroeker, who had a team-high 13 points, got Tabor as close as 8-4 before the Swedes hit the Bluejays with a 9-0 run that put the game out of striking distance, 22-8.
The Bluejays were in severe trouble by halftime, trailing 37-23.
Compared to Tabor's woeful 24 percent shooting in the second half, its 32 percent first half looked good.
Jons cut the Swedes' lead to 41-27 with two of her 11 points at the 18:32 mark, but a 17-0 run was the knockout blow.
