Ashley Sweat dribbled free and hit a point-blank shot with seven seconds remaining to give 18th-ranked Kansas State a 77-75 win against the Nebraska women's basketball team.
CURT McKEEVER / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 6:00 pm
Having been worked into a lather while futilely trying to contain Kansas State’s dribble-master point guard Kimberly Dietz, the Nebraska women’s basketball team got one final cold shiver Wednesday night from, appropriately enough, Ashley Sweat.
With the shot clock winding down, the sophomore forward dribbled free to hit a basket from point-blank range over Danielle Page with seven seconds remaining in the game to give the 18th-ranked Wildcats a truly wild 77-75 win at the Devaney Sports Center.
Before being able to celebrate the fourth time this month in which it handed an opponent its first home loss of the season, K-State survived an aggressive drive by Vonnie Turner and a putback attempt by Kelsey Griffin that rolled off the rim just before the buzzer.
“I just have a great deal of pride in their toughness,” Kansas State coach Deb Patterson said after her team won its 10th straight game to improve to 7-0 in the Big 12 and remain tied atop the standings with No. 6 Baylor three days before the two meet in Manhattan. “They’ve not the kind of team that’s going to live and die by who’s standing on the sidelines.”
She’s not kidding, either.
Patterson was ejected after drawing her second technical foul while objecting to the officiating when Turner came up with a steal with 8:06 to play. Kaitlyn Burke then hit two free throws to draw NU to 62-61, and the Huskers eventually went in front 68-66 on Griffin’s driving basket at the 4:30 mark.
But with associate head coach Kamie Ethridge calmly running things from the bench, the Wildcats kept their poise and pulled out the nail-biter by scoring on their final two possessions.
K-State trailed 73-72 when Turner hit a 22-foot three-pointer out top with 1:22 left. But Dietz, a 5-foot-9 senior who played all 40 minutes, came back to get the final three of her game-high 26 points on a set shot from the left wing .
Griffin, who had 19 points and 11 rebounds, retied the game a final time with 36.6 seconds to go by following her own miss after Page kept the ball alive. But following a Husker timeout, Sweat created just enough separation between she and Page to drop in the game winner.
“Not nearly as close as I needed to be,” Page said when asked how close she came to blocking her fifth shot of the game. “It shouldn’t have come down to that. I shouldn’t have let her beat me off the drive.”
Page was hardly the only Husker guilty of letting a Wildcat dribble past her. Dribble penetration led to the majority of K-State’s production. If Patterson’s players weren’t making some nice moves for buckets in the lane, they were kicking back to wide-open three-point shooters.
Their effectiveness staked them to a 12-point first-half lead before Nebraska carved eight off of that by halftime and then opened the final 20 minutes with a 15-4 spurt.
But Kansas State refused to be stunned and eventually found just enough to improve to 13-1 this season when leading at halftime.
“I think we’re just playing so well together right now that no matter what hits us we’re just going to keep going,” Dietz said. “We always find a way.”
Added Patterson, “I think they played true to who they’ve been all season long. They played smart, they played hard and they played well.”
As for Nebraska (15-6, 4-3), which now faces a game at Missouri on Sunday? Well, the Huskers weren’t getting positive marks for their smarts by coach Connie Yori.
“It’s not about playing had. We played hard,” Yori said. “But focused effort was a problem. We did not close out very well, play the correct hand in a lot of cases.”
As disappointed as she was by that, Yori then noted something else that was just as responsible, if not moreso, for putting her team in its chilly state.
“This game was a lot about what K-State did right,” she said. “We didn’t meet that challenge (defensively), but at the same time K-State’s playing great.”
Reach Curt McKeever at 473-7441 or cmckeever@journalstar.com.