StingRays Advance Emphatically

The StingRays, embarrassed by the Colorado Xplosion Sunday in Denver, restored order to their basketball world Wednesday night, beating Colorado, 92-61, and capturing a best-of-three first-round ABL playoff series.

With a Pyramid crowd of 2,650 cheering Long Beach’s growing margin in the second half, Coach Maura McHugh and her players seemed to feel they’d put things right. Pesky Colorado had blown them out Sunday, 88-68.

With the 2-1 series victory, Long Beach moves on to the ABL semifinal round. The StingRays meet Western Conference champion Portland Friday at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim, in another best-of-three series.

In the StingRay locker room afterward, “that’s more like it” was the prevailing mood.

And it wasn’t just business, center Venus Lacy said, it was “personal.”

The team was angered Sunday, by what they perceived as too-aggressive play by Colorado’s 6-foot-3 Tari Phillips in Denver. Phillips (17 points and 11 rebounds) played well again, but this time a toughened Long Beach perimeter defense was the difference.

Long Beach (26-18), getting much better shots inside than Colorado, shot 50%, Colorado 38.5%.

Lacy couldn’t resist rubbing it in.

“In Colorado, they talked a lot,” she said.

“But that’s cool. They can’t take it, see. They complained about every elbow tonight, every contact.

“OK, they’re hanging up their uniforms and we still got our’s on. This is the way it should be.”

McHugh credited the defensive play of guards Andrea Nagy, Beverly Williams and Niesa Johnson.

“This time we pressured outside and made it difficult for them to get good passes to their inside people,” McHugh said.

“Andrea did a great job on [Debbie] Black. And we contested the three-point shot this time [Colorado was two for 17 on three-pointers Wednesday, eight for 19 Sunday].”

And what of Portland, which has a 10-day break going into the semifinals?

“I started thinking of Portland when I walked off the court,” McHugh said.

“We’ve played a lot lately and they haven’t played at all . . . is that good or bad? I don’t know.”

The series begins at the Pond and ends with games two and three, if needed, in Portland Sunday and Tuesday.

“I think our focus has to be winning that Pond game--where we’re 2-0--then going one for two in Portland,” McHugh said.

Long Beach jumped to a 12-6 lead early than steadily rolled up its biggest winning margin of the season.

The Xplosion, 21-23 on the regular season and the sixth-seeded playoff team, was within 10 points midway through the third quarter until a 10-3 run led by Yolanda Griffith (23 points, 11 rebounds) essentially ended it.

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ABL Playoffs

Semifinals

Portland vs. StingRays

* Friday: at Long Beach, 7 p.m.

* Sunday: at Portland, 4 p.m.

* Tuesday: at Portland, 7 p.m*

*--if necessary