StingRay Winning Streak Is Ended by Seattle’s Enis

The StingRays went from their best game of the season to easily their worst in less than 24 hours before 1,110 Sunday afternoon at the Pyramid.

After defeating San Jose on Saturday, the StingRays stood around Sunday, allowed themselves to be boxed out and shot poorly in the clutch in an 88-80 loss to Seattle, previously thought to be the ABL’s worst team.

Had Long Beach (16-11) won and Portland lost Sunday, the StingRays could have slipped into first place in the ABL’s Western Conference. But Portland won and the StingRays’ four-game winning streak ended.

The streak is over in large part because of a rookie from Alabama who nearly wound up at USC three years ago.

Shalonda Enis was a junior college standout in Texas when Cheryl Miller was coaching at USC. Miller had Enis all but signed when Miller left abruptly to take a broadcasting job. The 6-foot-1 Enis went instead to Alabama and became Seattle’s top pick last spring.

Sunday, the StingRays made Enis look like the greatest player since Miller.

She scored 39 points--22 in the first half--and had 13 rebounds, the best offensive production against Long Beach this season and the best ever by a Reign player.

“We tried four different people on her, and no one would block her out of the low post,” Long Beach Coach Maura McHugh said. “It was very disappointing. We talked before and during the game about how we needed to block her out and we just didn’t do it.”

Enis, who entered the game averaging 18 points and eight rebounds, dominated Long Beach underneath at the outset and down the stretch. She scored 14 of Seattle’s 17 first-quarter points, and its last five, all on free throws when the StingRays were employing a form of karate to get back into the game.

Enis made 13 of 16 free throws in the game.

Seattle Coach Tammy Holder, who took over Dec. 9 for the fired Jacquie Hullah, was quietly delighted afterward. Her team, which had lost 10 in a row, has now won two in a row.

“Shalonda is a great player and she’s played a lot of great games for us,” she said.

Seattle (8-21) had the lead most of the game.

Seattle led, 38-35, at halftime.

Long Beach crawled back to within one, 44-43, but Seattle went on a 10-0 run, with Kate Starbird scoring four of her 15 points. That pretty much decided it. The StingRays never came closer than seven points, after Trish Stafford converted a drive to make the score, 70-63, with 6:18 left.

McHugh sounded off about the officials, who tagged her team with two technicals in the last quarter.

“We were getting clocked underneath and couldn’t get any calls,” she said.

StingRays Notes

StingRay publicist Linda Reid and husband Scott left the Pyramid late Saturday night, after the Long Beach-San Jose game. She went into labor at dawn Sunday and gave birth to 8-pound 4-ounce Duncan Christopher Reid at 12:52 p.m.