Complete Game Notes
Official PSAC Championship Tournament Page
GAME INFORMATION
Millersville (20-7) vs. Shippensburg (20-7)
Wednesday, Mar. 5, 2013 - 7 p.m.
Heiges Fieldhouse, Shippensburg, Pa.
MEDIA INFORMATION
Live Video Feed (Shippensburg)
Audio Broadcast (Shippensburg)
Live Stats
TICKET INFORMATION
www.muticketsonline.com
$7.00 Adults
$2.00 Students
Free Admission for Students from PSAC member institution with a valid school ID
SERIES INFORMATION
Series vs. Ship: 42-44
Series Streak: Ship, 3
First Meeting: 1921-22 (Ship, 15-14)
Last Meeting: 2013 (Ship, 72-62)
Last 10: 7-3
Mary Fleig vs. Shippensburg: 15-15
Kristy Trn vs. Millersville: 7-12
GAME NOTES
· The Marauders are back into the second round of play in the PSAC Tournament for the first time since 2010-11 courtesy of a 42-31 win over East Stroudsburg Saturday at Pucillo Gymnasium. Despite scoring the team's fewest points since putting just 39 on the board at Florida Southern on Dec. 17, 2008, the Marauders closed the Warriors on a 13-0 run. The 31 points the team allowed were the lowest the team had given up since allowing just 26 in a win over Mansfield on Jan. 31, 2009 and the lowest total ever allowed in a PSAC Tournament game. Redshirt senior point guard
Mashira Newman scored a game-high 15 points to go along with seven rebounds, three assists, three steals and three blocks, and redshirt senior forward
Aurielle Mosley scored eight points to go along with a game-high 15 rebounds. Mosley's string of 11-straight double-figure scoring outputs was snapped, as was her nine game string of shooting at least 50 percent from the field.
· Despite having those streaks snapped, Mosley's final bucket of the evening gave her 1,399 career points, moving her past current athletic director
Peg Kauffman and into fifth place on the team's career scoring list. That top-five ranking, coupled with a fifth-placed ranking in field goals made, second-place ranking in rebounds and a career-record blocks makes her only the second player in school history to land in the top five of each category next to Shelly Bowie. The York native also has room for advancement; she is at 1,002 career boards, just three away from Kristy Garner's program record of 1,005. Mosley is just the second member of the 1,000-1,000 club (points and rebounds) and one more bucket from the senior would make her the only player in school history to have 1,400 points and 1,000 rebounds.
· For her career, Newman has been just as good and is just two assists away from 500 for her career and is firmly entrenched at second all-time in career helpers. At fourth place on the all-time scoring list, the North Hills native also ranks third in steals, tied-for-10th in blocks and 13th in rebounds. She is already the first player to rank in the top five in points, steals and assists, but the two assists would also make her the only player in school history to be a member of the 1,000-500-500 club, achieving those figures in points, rebounds and assists, respectively. With seven more steals, Newman would also be only the third player to post 400 thefts in a career. In terms of the scoring, Newman and Mosley are the highest-scoring pair of classmates in program history, combining for a total of 2,819 points to top the combination of Sara Burcin and Safiyyah Bashir. That tandem previously held the mark for the highest-scoring duo in school history with 2,809 points.
· Defeating East Stroudsburg at home in the PSAC Tournament's first round could have been classified as the “easy part”. From here, the road to the team's first PSAC title since the 2004-05 season becomes tougher, as the Marauders must now hit the road and travel to Shippensburg. After the win on the Pucillo Gymnasium hardwood, Fleig's teams improved to 13-5 at home all-time in the conference tourney. The trouble has been on the road and in neutral sites; over the past 23 seasons (Fleig's tenure as head coach), Millersville is just 1-9 in PSAC Tournament road games and 2-5 in games played at a neutral site. Regardless of Tuesday night's result, the Marauders will not have any home games left this season, so the tough part begins at Shippensburg.
· One player who will be key to a Marauder victory Tuesday night is
Senada Mehmedovic, especially if
Celeste Robinson is again unavailable to play as she has missed the last two games due to injury. In the 11 games in which Mehmedovic has gone for double digits so far this season, Millersville is 10-1. In 16 games where she has not, the team is just 10-6. It is important too that the junior guard gets her looks from beyond the 3-point arc. In 17 of the team's games, Mehmedovic has attempted at least five 3-pointers; the Marauders' record is 14-3 in such games. Bet on the Carlisle native to make sure that happens as well, as she has dialed up long distance on 159 of her 260 field goal attempts this season, taking 61.2 percent of her shots from 3-point range in an attempt to spread the floor effectively for Mosley and Newman to work.
ABOUT SHIPPENSBURG
· The Raiders and Marauders just met on the second-to-last day of February, as Ship came away with a 72-62 victory at Pucillo Gymnasium on the final game of the regular season to put an end to Millersville's division title hopes and sweep the pair of meetings between the teams this season. But the Raiders won more than just the game last Wednesday night; they won the right to host the Marauders in a PSAC Quarterfinal matchup, and that may have been their biggest takeaway from the season's final day. Had history been written differently and Shippensburg lost to Millersville, the Marauders would have hosted the PSAC Tournament and grabbed the first-round bye that the Raiders ended up getting. With that, Ship would have had to travel to Bloomsburg Tuesday night for the PSAC conference tourney's second round and the Raiders surely didn't want that scenario, as they are 0-2 against the Huskies this year. The Marauders also aren't looking to have deja vu in this matchup. Last time the Raiders entertained Millersville at Heiges Fieldhouse, Ship made more trips to the line (43) than it had field goa attempts (39). The road team also committed its most fouls in a game (29) in at least a decade, as the Raiders came away with a 70-58 win in a game that saw three Marauder players foul out.
· In fact, if Shippensburg has one big strength this season, it is the team's ability to draw fouls on opponents and earn trips to the charity stripe. Ship gets to the free throw line and makes more attempts than any other team in college basketball this season across all three divisions of NCAA play. But for the Raiders, those trips to the line aren't all about volume, as the team makes 73.0 percent of its attempts, demonstrating efficiency when shooting freebies.
· A player in particular that Millersville will have to keep tabs on is PSAC East Rookie of the Year candidate Stephanie Knauer. A low-post presence, the 6-0 freshman averages 13.1 points and 9.1 rebounds per game, the latter of which ranks her fourth in the conference. A seven-time PSAC East Freshman of the Week pick this season, Knauer can also beat opponents from the line, shooting 73.4 percent from the stripe, well above average for a post player. Knauer did not hurt the Marauders in their loss at Ship on Jan. 30, totaling just six points and five rebounds. The North Penn High School product did find her groove at Pucillo last Wednesday, however, going for 17 points and 10 rebounds, good for her 12th double-double of the year. On the perimeter, the Marauders will focus their attention on Sarah Strybuc and her 66 3-pointers made this year. That total is third-best in the PSAC, and Strybuc paces the team in scoring at 13.9 points per game. The visitors, however, have done a good job of pinning Strybuc down in the two meetings between the teams, holding her to 9.5 points per game on 5-of-19 field goal attempts and just 3-for-12 beyond the arc.
· Shippensburg also enters this game rolling, having won four consecutive games and 11 of its past 12 games. That four-game win streak has come by an average of 14.5 points per game, capped by last Wednesday's 10-point win over the Marauders.
