NWC Tip Off Tourney - Simpson vs North Central 11-20-10

The 3rd place game for the NWC Tip Off Tourney took place Saturday afternoon at 1:00 P.M. over at Northwestern's Ericksen Center.  To be honest, I was more or less expecting a blowout win by the Storm as they were likely still smarting from their heart-breaking loss to UW-River Falls yesterday and, as you can imagine, this one got coyote-ugly early on. 

North Central started the game in a 2-3 zone in the hope of forcing Simpson to beat them strictly from the perimeter but those hopes were quickly dashed when the Storm's standout post Stacey Schutjer got an easy "bunny" and Mindy Hutchcroft followed it up with a steal and easy layup for a quick 4-0 Simpson lead at the 19:17 mark.  A little more than two minutes later, Simpson had stretched things out at 13-2 with Amy Hamilton's 3-pointer and the slaughter on Lydia Avenue was on.  Julia Skeesick of North Central would temporarily stop the bleeding at the 13:04 and 12:33 marks with a couple of pretty "3's" to cut in the Storm's romp at 22-7 but from then on Simpson would go on a 30-6 run the rest of the way to make it 52-13 at the half.  In a nutshell, it was a matter of numerous steals and fast breaks by a superior team doing what they do best.

The onslaught continued in the second half as Simpson started out on an 11-0 run to extend the bulge to 63-13 before North Central was able to get a couple of meaningless baskets.  Finally, at the 13:00 mark when the issue had LONG been settled, Head Coach Brian Niemuth sent in the scrubs and gave the mainstays the rest of the day off as Simpson cruised to an easy 88-41 win that could have been a lot worse.

Simpson definitely has a great team and you would expect them to be there at the end along with Coe; fighting it out for the IIAC title.  Schutjer, when she's on her game, can be tough to stop down low.  And she's a very versatile post player who can dribble and bring the ball up the floor if she has to.  Also impressive to me for the Storm is Kate Nielsen coming off the bench.  She's very physical and is a great perimeter shooter as well.

I'll give some credit to an otherwise hapless North Central program.  They are taking baby-steps at becoming competitive although they arguably still have a long way to go yet.  They at least have a few players on the squad who are genuinely decent players (Skeesick, for example, was on the '08 Chaska squad that made it to the state tournament).  It takes time and you understandably have to take your lumps along the way.