ORU women capture Mid-Con title - Tulsa World (3-7-2007)

[ORUTerry]

ORU women capture Mid-Con title

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by MATT DOYLE World Sports Writer

3/7/2007

Golden Eagles earn an automatic bid into NCAA Tournament.

Jerry Finkbeiner borrowed from Scripture to get his Oral Roberts University women's basketball team out of a down period.

Finkbeiner took the passage from the Bible when David was set to challenge Goliath. David asked what he would get if he killed Goliath. Finkbeiner used the spiritual writing as motivation to get the Golden Eagles' season turned around after opening Mid-Continent Conference play at 3-4.

"We needed some boldness and confidence, and little shepherd David exhibited that better than anybody," Finkbeiner said. "When you translate it into modern English and our language, we asked what will we get when we go to the NCAA Tournament."

Finkbeiner and his players can start asking that question.

The Golden Eagles qualified for the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three years and fourth time in Finkbeiner's 11-year tenure with a convincing 72-55 victory over Oakland in the Mid-Con Tournament championship game at the UMAC on Tuesday.

The Golden Eagles (22-10) earned an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. The entire 64-team NCAA field will be announced Monday night on ESPN cable 25.

Finkbeiner first used the David-Goliath comparison in late January after Oakland stunned the Golden Eagles 68-64 in overtime at the Mabee Center. Oakland rallied from 10 points down with a minute left in regulation time.

That was the low point of the season, according to Finkbeiner and his players.

"That was a bad time. But that was when he first told us to play with boldness and confidence and think about what we would get when we won the Mid-Con championship tournament," said ORU senior forward Elisha Turek. "That's where the turning point occurred. We knew we were the best team in the conference and we had to start playing like it."

Finkbeiner had blue T-shirts printed with David's message in Hebrew that the team has worn the past few weeks.

Since the home loss to Oakland, ORU has won 9-of-11 games. Tuesday afternoon's showing demonstrated that the Golden Eagles were indeed the Mid-Con's best team.

After playing to a 35-all tie in the first half, ORU blew away the regular-season champions in the second half.

Rachel Watman hit three 3-pointers in the first eight minutes as ORU scored 17 of the first 23 points of the half to build a 52-41 lead. Watman had 16 of her 18 points after intermission.

With Watman hitting her perimeter shots, it forced Oakland to stop sagging defensively on Turek inside. Turek finished with 18 points and was named the tournament's most valuable player.

"We were not going to let Turek beat us," Oakland coach Beckie Francis said "We played the percentages. It's a higher percentage shot for Turek with that turnaround, deadly jumper player of the year shot, or an outside 3-point shot."

The shooting percentages did not favor the Golden Grizzlies, either. After shooting above 50 percent in the first half, Oakland made just 8-of-33 shots in the second half.

"We knew we had to lock down on defense," Watman said. "All three games (in the tournament), it came down to defense. . . . We just brought it."

Finkbeiner said the mind-set change late in the season helped make this championship the sweetest of his four at ORU.

"There's no question because of what this group didn't give up on," he said.

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Matt Doyle 581-8316

matt.doyle@tulsaworld.com