First Season Ends Painfully for StingRays
In a basketball game that at times bordered on savagery--with players getting elbowed, kicked and jumped upon--the ABL’s second championship turned on two plays of great artistry.
Unfortunately for the Long Beach StingRays, both of them were performed by the Columbus Quest, who swept all three home games of the best-of-five championship series and won their second consecutive ABL title.
Columbus’ 86-81 victory wasn’t secured until the final minute, after the StingRays had rubbed out a 73-64 deficit with 3:42 to go and cut it to 75-74 with 1:31 to go.
Then, two plays, for a championship:
*Tonya Edwards, a 29-year-old guard out of Tennessee, with 1:01 to go and the capacity crowd of 6,313 standing, drove right through the Long Beach defense and made a graceful, soft-touch layup and was fouled by Clarissa Davis-Wrightsil.
She made the foul shot for 78-74, the crowd went crazy, and then, seconds later, it got really loud.
*Valerie Still, a 36-year-old out of Kentucky (she’s ex-NFL lineman Art Still’s sister), closed the show. With 50 seconds to go, she soared high on the perimeter to grab right out of the air a desperate three-point shot by Long Beach’s Niesa Johnson.
Later, Still, who scored 25 points, was named the finals’ most valuable player for a second straight year and earned another $10,000 check.
The StingRays fouled Katie Smith at the other end six seconds later and her two free throws made it 80-74, with 44 seconds left.
Davis-Wrightsil, who had a season-high 36 points, made her third three-pointer of the game to keep it close at 82-79 with 23 seconds left, but Smith, fouled two seconds later in the backcourt, made it 84-79 from the line.
There were no tears from the StingRays, only a cold anger as they came to the press room to endure awkward moments at a botched press conference. No one from the team or the league showed up to run it.
They’d completed a remarkable season--an expansion team that went 26-18 in the regular season. Led by the ABL’s best player, Yolanda Griffith, the club knocked Colorado and Portland out of the playoffs, then beat Columbus twice in the two games in Long Beach.
They shot a combined 26.1% from the floor in the first two losses here, but shot 51% Sunday. And Long Beach’s free-throw shooting again was excellent-- 21 for 22 Sunday, 84.8% for the five-game series.
The difference was Columbus’ 38 for 43 free-throw shooting.
“When it was tight down the stretch, if they’d just missed one or two of those free throws at the right time . . . “ StingRay Coach Maura McHugh said.
McHugh congratulated her players and the Quest, and said Griffith had been kicked in the left calf in Game 4 Wednesday, impairing her mobility. The 6-foot-4 Griffith scored only 10 points and had a season-low three rebounds. She had a combined 33 boards in Games 3 and 4.
Davis-Wrightsil: “We’re disappointed, sure. We played hard. That’s life. We just have to move forward.”
Long Beach came out tenaciously, trading Columbus elbow-for-elbow. Smith was elbowed five times in the head in the first quarter alone. In the third quarter, Smith came down from a layup and landed feet-first on Long Beach’s Dana Wilkerson, who’d been knocked down on the play.
“If you back down physically to Columbus, you get blown out,” McHugh said.
“So we knew it would be a physical game and that we wouldn’t back down.”
Still, wearing a shiner under her left eye from Game 2, talked again of retirement. She was the finals MVP a year ago, planned to retire, but then signed a two-year contract.
Late Sunday, just as she told the media “it’s probably time for me to let it go,” Columbus Coach Brian Agler said: “Don’t take that down--Val and I haven’t talked about this yet.”
Of Still’s mid-air swipe of Johnson’s shot, Agler said: “That play sealed the deal.”
ABL Notes
The Quest said “500 to 700” were turned away Sunday night. It was only the second sellout in two seasons for the Quest, which ranked sixth in ABL attendance this season. And yes, there were scalpers outside--believed to be an ABL first.
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Columbus vs. StingRays
Best of five
Columbus wins series, 3-2
* Game 1: Long Beach 65, Columbus 62
* Game 2: Long Beach 71, Columbus 61
* Game 3: Columbus 70, Long Beach 61
* Game 4: Columbus 68, Long Beach 53
* Sunday: Columbus 86, Long Beach 84