StingRays’ Defense Leaves Quest Groping for Answers

Now, when they could use her the most, the Columbus Quest’s departed superstar, Nikki McCray, is casting a long shadow over her former teammates.

McCray, the ABL’s most valuable player last season and the leading scorer in the playoffs a year ago, when Columbus won it all, jumped leagues last summer, leaving for a WNBA deal that was tied into a $1-million deal with a shoe company.

Throughout the 44-game regular season, as Columbus swept to a 36-8 record, it was, “Who needs her?”

Now, with the Long Beach StingRays one victory away from the ABL championship, Columbus suddenly finds itself without an offensive catalyst, a shooter to surmount Long Beach’s relentless, no-holds-barred defense.

At times in the first two games of this best-of-five series, what with cross-blocks, grabbing and hand-checking, it has seemed closer to NFL football than basketball.

But that’s an aside. Columbus has brought no shooter to this series.

All season, Quest players and Coach Brian Agler have been asked how they seemed to be even better without McCray. The answers usually included such phrases as “better teamwork,” “a new chemistry,” “everyone else stepping up.”

Offensive leadership fell to former Ohio State All-American Katie Smith, a 5-foot-11 forward who tore Long Beach apart in four regular-season games. But in the two Long Beach wins Sunday and Monday, Smith shot five for 24.

Sunday night, she paid high tribute to her tormentors, saying, “We’re having a hard time handling their press. We’re having a hard time getting open and seeing things. I haven’t gotten great looks but I don’t think any of us have. We’re struggling to find good shots.”

There is some good news for the Quest. They’re back in 6,300-seat Battelle Hall, where they have won 22 in a row and where they tore up Long Beach, 111-80, in the final regular-season meeting Feb. 15.

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Columbus vs. StingRays

Best of five

Long Beach leads series, 2-0

* Sunday: Long Beach 65, Columbus 62

* Monday: Long Beach 71, Columbus 61

* Today: at Columbus, 4 p.m.

* Friday: at Columbus, 4 p.m.*

* Sunday: at Columbus, 4 p.m.*

*--if necessary