Motivated Auburn Women Beat Louisiana Tech, 76-71

Auburn Coach Joe Ciampi, for whom the word stern seems an apt description, smiled briefly after his team had erased a year of bitter memories and beat defending national champion Louisiana Tech Friday night in the semifinals of the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. women’s basketball tournament.

Ciampi was smiling not just because his second-ranked Tigers had outlasted the No. 3 Lady Techsters, 76-71, before 9,030 in the Tacoma Dome. There was another reason. The teams met in last year’s championship game, but with a different result. Auburn blew a 14-point halftime lead and Louisiana Tech won, 56-54.

So devastated was the Auburn team that the players told Ciampi that they wanted to prepare for this season without delay. They took two weeks off after last April’s loss and began training. The team started the season by winning 28 in a row before losing to Tennessee. The Tigers are 32-1.

So, imagine their glee when Louisiana Tech arrived as their semifinal opponent. Ciampi asked reporters all week not to write the revenge angle. “Call it motivation, not revenge,” he said.

Leon Barmore of Louisiana Tech would have none of it.

“Joe can tell you no revenge all he wants,” Barmore said Wednesday. “But I haven’t see Joe Ciampi smile in 10 years. He would like nothing more than to kick my butt and I would like nothing more than to kick his.”

Having set the ground rules, the teams, similar in style, launched into a physical game.

Auburn led by as many as seven points in the first half, but was not able to shake Louisiana Tech. The Lady Techsters had a handful of mini-runs in the half, the most successful of which came at 9:31. Tech scored eight unanswered points, mostly from the inside. The last basket in the run came on Shelia Ethridge’s first three-point attempt and gave Tech its first lead, 28-27, with 6:47 left.

The game see-sawed from that point until Ethridge made her second three-pointer and gave Tech the lead for the second time, 37-36, with 2:06 left in the half.

Auburn led at the half, 40-39.

Ciampi said his team made defensive adjustments to attempt to neutralize Tech’s Venus Lacy. The 6-foot-4 center had 16 points at the half and was very nearly unstoppable.

“Louisiana Tech did such a good job early of running the ball, of taking the ball to the basket, that we had to go back and regroup and start taking away their inside,” Ciampi said.

While Lacy was having her way inside, Tech forward Nora Lewis was having trouble. Lewis averaged 18.5 points during the season, but had only four points by halftime. She also committed two fouls.

“In the first half, it was my fault,” Lewis said. “I didn’t go to the high post as much as I should have. As far as foul trouble, that was probably my fault. I made some stupid fouls.”

Auburn reversed roles in the second half, coming out aggressively on defense and pounding the ball inside to Vickie Orr and Linda Godby. In addition, the Tigers were able to take advantage of the loss of Tech’s starting guard, Pam Wells, who reinjured her left knee after only eight minutes in the first half.

It took about 10 minutes for the new Tiger game plan to settle in. In the meantime, the Lady Techsters surged to an eight-point lead. Ethridge began the run by making two free throws with the game tied at 49-49. Tech built a 57-49 lead before Ciampi called a timeout.

Auburn took control from that point on. The Tigers’ extended defense and improved defensive rebounding frustrated Tech. Ciampi also switched to what he called a “very, very patient offense.”

“The key in those last 10 minutes was the defense we played,” he said. “The way we sagged back into the middle and took them out of their offensive boards. That was the key, to make adjustments.”

Tech reacted by forcing shots on offense and committing fouls on defense. Lewis got her fourth foul with 9:37 left and fouled out with 2:07 left.

“I would never use fouls as an excuse,” Barmore said. “(But) it’s obvious that if Nora Lewis didn’t pick up her fourth foul with eight or nine minutes to go, we could have stayed ahead and won the game.”

Lacy led all scorers with 30 points and had 13 rebounds. Orr, who played only 25 minutes, led the Tigers with 18 points.

In speaking with reporters after the game, Barmore was philosophical and gently praised his players, in sharp contrast to Ciampi who has a Bob Knight-like approach to personal relations.

“We said that going into this year it would be very hard for us to defend out national title,” Barmore said. ‘We had a sign in the dressing room that said, ‘Champions die hard, if they die at all.’ I think we can all agree that Louisiana Tech died hard.”

Tech (32-4) did die, done in partly by its mastery of Auburn a year ago. But Barmore refused to be downcast.

“I’m not hurting,” he said. “I’d be hurting if these kids had left something out there on the court. They did not. I have no feelings of sadness, I am disappointed and I am tired. But I am proud, too.”