RON MALY HAS BEEN WATCHING THE PARADE GO BY FOR A LONG TIME. THIS IS ONE OF HIS WEBSITES.

Friday, November 23, 2012

Rally By Drake's Women Falls Short, 69-64

A rally by Drake's women's basketball team fell short as the California-Irvine prevailed, 69-64, Friday in the Aggie Hotel Encanto Thanksgiving Classic at Las Cruces, N.M.

The Bulldogs fell behind by 13 points with just over 5 minutes left in the game, but fought back to cut the Anteaters' lead to 65-64, after Kyndal Clark (Webb City, Mo.) buried a three-pointer with 39 seconds left. After Drake called a timeout, the Anteaters’ Methlyn Onogomuho rebounded a miss by Jasmine Bernard and scored on a putback to extend the lead to 67-64 with 14 seconds tp gp/. Clark had a good look on a three-point attempt but it was long and the Anteaters pulled down the board with just two seconds on the clock and Drake was forced to foul. Pernilla Hanson hit two free throws to seal the game for UCI (1-4).

“We fought back, and I’m proud of the fight we showed,” Drake coach Jennie Baranczyk said. “But we have some work to do learning how to come ready to play out of halftime. Part of that is maturity with us being such a young team but we will continue to get better. We also have to fight on the boards and come up with some of those loose balls at the end of the game.”

Junior Mary Pat Specht (Shawnee, Kan.) had her best game in her first season at Drake (1-2) as she came off the bench to score 15 points. Stephanie Running (Oak Creek, Wis.) also had 15 points and added nine rebounds. Clark finished with 13 points and six rebounds.

“Mary Pat brought great energy off the bench today and I wish we could have gotten a few more touches for Stephanie especially at the end but she struggled with foul trouble,” Baranczyk said.

[This story was written for Ron Maly by John Meyer of Drake's sports information staff].