Sports
March 1
Step aside, Andrew Olson: The task of hitting clutch postseason shots against Tufts has fallen to a new Amherst basketball player.
Freshman guard Kim Fiorentino drilled a game-winning three-pointer with 48 seconds remaining to give nationally ranked No. 7 Amherst a 49-46 victory over the 15th-ranked Tufts women's basketball team in the NESCAC semifinals Saturday afternoon in Brunswick, Maine.
While the setback won't end the Jumbos' season — ranked second in the Northeast, the team is heavily favored to receive an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament today — it did continue Amherst's recent run of success against Tufts. Of the eight losses the Jumbos have suffered over the last two seasons, four have come at the hands of the Lord Jeffs — and none by greater than six points. Two of those setbacks have come in postseason play, as Amherst has now eliminated Tufts from the NESCAC Tournament in each of the last two years.
Nearly three years after Olson, a 2008 Amherst graduate, famously drained an off-balance, buzzer-beating three pointer against the Tufts men's basketball team in the 2006 Sweet Sixteen, Fiorentino provided her own heroics against a different Jumbo squad. With under a minute to play and the score knotted at 46, the first-year starter knocked down an open look from the top of the key — the only made basket of her four field-goal attempts — to advance the second-seeded Lord Jeffs to the NESCAC championship game for the second straight year.
"I don't think it really was a [set] play; it was just more of the flow of the game," Fiorentino said. "I didn't really think about it — I just shot it. It was my only make of the game, so I was glad it went in."
The Jumbos, seeded third in the tournament, had a chance to tie on their ensuing possession, but after spending a timeout to set up a play, they were unable to inbound the ball and were charged with a five-second violation. The untimely turnover returned possession to the Lord Jeffs with 38 seconds remaining.
"That was incredible; we had written something up, and we just didn't get into it quick enough," coach Carla Berube said. "I probably should have called a timeout and reset it again. That was a huge play."
"That was just us not being disciplined and listening to the play and executing," sophomore point guard Colleen Hart added. "It was a big mistake down the stretch."
A defensive stop on the other end of the floor gave Tufts the ball with 8.3 seconds left and one last chance to force overtime. But all the Jumbos could manage was a fall-away air ball by Hart as time expired.
"We didn't get the best look, but it's hard when you have [eight] seconds left and they know we need a three," Hart said. "I think we were mostly just trying to get something up, but it's tough when they can all stand out at the three-point line to defend."
The dramatic second half was preceded by a forgettable first period, in which two of the NESCAC's top three scoring teams combined for a paltry 36 points on 22.9 percent shooting. Foul trouble also contributed to the Jumbos' offensive woes. Starting senior forward Katie Tausanovitch picked up her second foul 3:09 into the game, sending her to the bench for the remainder of the half, while senior co-captain Kim Moynihan was limited to 10 first-half minutes after racking up three personal fouls.
Meanwhile, Tufts' top two scorers, Hart and junior forward Julia Baily, couldn't pick up the slack, combining for one point on 0-of-11 shooting in the period. The Jumbos' three freshman reserves — guard Tiffany Kornegay and forwards Rachel Figaro and Kate Barnosky — wound up outscoring the team's starting five in the first half.
"We didn't put ourselves in a good position with our first half," Berube said. "It's very difficult when [Tausanovitch] plays three minutes in the first half and [Moynihan] is on the bench with three fouls and we're not running any sort of offense, and there's no semblance of anything we've been working on."
"I think our biggest downfall was our first half," Hart added. "We had a really tough first half and gave them a lot of momentum. We just can't do that against good teams."
Despite scoring just 15 points in the period, the Jumbos went into halftime down only six, and thanks to an early second-half run, they were right back in the game. Returning to the floor at the start of the second half, Moynihan and Tausanovitch tallied seven unanswered points to give Tufts its final lead of the day, a 22-21 advantage with 17:41 to play.
Amherst responded by scoring 18 of the next 26 points, the last three of which came on a conventional three-point play by sophomore forward Jaci Daigneault, to put the Lord Jeffs up nine with 9:45 to play. But the Jumbos refused to go quietly. Playing with four fouls, Moynihan scored seven consecutive Tufts points as part of an 11-2 run that tied the game at 41 with 5:11 remaining.
But down the stretch, the Jumbos' poor execution prevented them from getting over the hump. Over the final six minutes of the game, Tufts shot 3-of-10 from the floor, missed three free throws and committed a lane violation that led to an extra Amherst point.
"Possession by possession, if you look at it down the stretch, they'd hit an open shot, and we'd have trouble making open shots, executing offense and knocking down big free throws," Berube said. "It's difficult because we were right there, and that was a game that we could have won. It hurts."
Just two players reached double figures in scoring: Daigneault, whose career-high 23 points were just five off the NESCAC Tournament record set in 2006, and Moynihan, who led Tufts with 16.
The Lord Jeffs wound up finishing in second to host Bowdoin, as their furious comeback attempt fell short in a 49-46 loss yesterday afternoon. The Polar Bears erased any doubt on whether they would be continuing their season and earned the NESCAC's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
The tournament's bids and full bracket will be released at 11 a.m. today.
