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ERIE, Pa. - Concordia-St. Paul's (28-9) tremendous postseason run came to a close on Tuesday afternoon with a 72-64 loss to #10 Nova Southeastern (29-4) in the NCAA Division II Women's Basketball Elite Eight at Erie Insurance Arena hosted by Gannon University.

The Golden Bears tied the program's single season wins record for the third time, all coming under 14th year head coach Paul Fessler.

Fessler commented after the game in the press conference, "We talked in the locker room after the game that we weren't going to focus on this game because we didn't have our best day today. We are going to focus on the season and the run we made to get here. Our players are proud recognizing they took the program to a new level coming to the Elite Eight."

Concordia's postseason run included four straight top-10 opponents and five straight top-20 opponents with a regional and conference tournament championship in the path.

"I think we're a top-10 team ourselves," said Fessler. "We became awfully good and tough to beat and we don't really focus on playing against top-10 teams."



Trailing for most of the contest, Concordia erased an 11-point deficit (34-23) with 18:10 to play in the second half by tying the score at 43 with 9:30 remaining on a pair of free throws by junior forward Anika Whiting (Wausau, Wis.). She finished with 14 points, seven rebounds and two blocked shots in 32 minutes.

Senior guard Rachel Hansen (Eagan, Minn.) converted a tough shot in the lane in traffic at 8:42 to tie the game again at 45 before the Sharks separated themselves once again. Hansen led Concordia with 16 points and five assists while playing all 40 minutes in her final game.

Nova Southeastern, top seed and champions of the South Region, scored the next four points and eventually built a 9-point lead (55-46) with under five minutes to play and kept the lead at two possessions or greater the rest of the contest.

"I kept telling the team, 'if we get two stops in a row and take the lead, we wouldn't relinquish it and finish off winning.' We just couldn't get those two stops," Fessler concluded.

Concordia wasn't able to slow down Nova Southeastern's Amanda Burakoski as she scored a game-high 27 points on 7-13 shooting with 11 rebounds off the bench. Aside from Burakoski, the Sharks shot just 20.0% (11-55) from the floor and even with her Concordia slowed the NSU offense to 26.5% (18-68) shooting.

But the Sharks countered by grabbing nearly half of their misses on the offensive glass with 22 offensive rebounds and a 60-42 advantage on the boards overall.

Concordia's offense fared better than the Sharks, shooting 32.9% (23-70) from the floor. But NSU converted 75.6% of its 41 free throws to Concordia's 57.9% foul shooting in just 19 attempts.

Junior Ameshia Kearney added 12 points on three three-pointers and four assists while sophomore Kionda Nicks tied her own school record with eight blocked shots and six rebounds in the game. Seven of Nicks' eight blocks came in the first half as the Golden Bears set a new team record with 14 blocks in the game.

After leading for two minutes early thanks to a three-pointer two minutes in by senior Carissa Wolyniec (Minneapolis) and with a 5-5 tie, Concordia would fall behind for the rest of the first half and a majority of the second half.

Wolyniec made three three-pointers and scored 15 points with five rebounds for Concordia.

Nova Southeastern used a 9-0 run spanning just over three minutes of play to grab a 14-5 lead with 12 minutes to go in the half.

Concordia battled back over the next several minutes to cut the margin back to two, 17-15 as the margin remained tight for most of the rest of the opening half.

With a three-point game (24-21) with under three minutes to play in the half, the Sharks closed the half strong by shutting the Golden Bears out down the stretch while hitting two three-pointers to build momentum with a 30-21 lead at the break.

In the second half, Nova Southeastern pushed the lead to double digits twice, once before Concordia stormed back to tie the game at 43 and again at 45 at 34-23 with 18:10 and again at 64-54 with 1:17 to play.

After the second 10-point lead, Concordia clawed back again by cutting the margin in half in just 22 seconds of game time and had it down to four with 15 seconds to play but the Sharks converted their final four free throws to advance to the Final Four.

Nova Southeastern will play #5 West Texas A&M on Wednesday, March 26 at 5 p.m. in the national semifinals.

SEASON NOTES:
Whiting established a school record 655 points
Nicks set a school record 104 blocked shots
Hansen set records for single season free throws made (184) and attempted (257)
Wolyniec set a season record with 100 three-pointers made