Golden Eagles fight to the end

Special To NWA Media JBU Sports Information Sierra Shipley, John Brown guard, defends against an Oklahoma City ball handler during Monday's NAIA National Tournament Fab Four game at FRANKFORT, Ky. JBU lost 67-65.

Special To NWA Media JBU Sports Information Sierra Shipley, John Brown guard, defends against an Oklahoma City ball handler during Monday's NAIA National Tournament Fab Four game at FRANKFORT, Ky. JBU lost 67-65.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

— For the second straight game, John Brown University's women's basketball team didn't bat an eye when it found itself down by double-digits late in the second half.

"We're a comeback team," said Golden Eagles senior Kortni Barenberg.

JBU was unable to duplicate its come-from-behind victory magic from Saturday in Monday's NAIA National Tournament Fab Four game, losing 67-65 when its shot to tie missed, but it wasn't from a lack of guts.

JBU trailed Oklahoma City by as many as 14 points in the second half and was still down 12 with 7:06 remaining.

On Saturday against Loyola, the Golden Eagles trailed by 18 points into the last part of the second half before going on a 23-3 run to close the game and rallying to win.

So when Oklahoma City led 65-53 heading into the final seven minutes, Stars coach Latricia Trammell tried everything she could to avert a JBU rally.

"If you noticed I called several timeouts," she said. "I kept reminding them this is a team that fights back, and they've always done that against us. So I knew that I had to make sure that we didn't feel comfortable. Miss (Sierra) Shipley can take the game over by herself and she brought them back close there at the end. I knew that we would have to stay focused on what we needed to do."

• • •

Shipley and Barenberg combined to score 40 points in their final game as Golden Eagles. Shipley led with 23 points, four rebounds and two assists. Barenberg had 17 points, two rebounds and a blocked shot. Senior Kami Garrison finished with four rebounds and an assist in her final game as a Golden Eagle.

"It's been a great year," Barenberg said. "There's no other way I'd rather go out. It would have loved to have beat City, but this team's great and it was great to be a part of it. It was a blessing."

Said Shipley: "Right now it's really hard being so close and the seniors' last year. We have so many supporters. It was amazing to see how many people were behind us this year. It's been fun to see everyone coming together and all the support we've had because of this great year."

JBU head coach Jeff Soderquist said the makeup of this year's team made his job simple.

"This team, I'm just telling you, it's made my job easy to coach because this team thinks it can win," he said. "Every game this year this team thought that it could win. We didn't have a game where it was, 'oh no it's this team or that team.' This team thought they could win every game they stepped in."

Sports on 03/26/2014