March is often thought of as the time of year when "drama" and "college basketball" are synonomous. In Thursday's Mountain East Conference women's quarterfinal between third-seeded Notre Dame College and sixth-seeded Urbana, however, that was not the case.
The Falcons raced out to a big lead early against the cold-shooting Blue Knights and never tailed in an 86-43 drubbing at the Charleston Civic Center.
Notre Dame (20-9) lost its regular-season finale at Urbana last week and in the process lost one of its leading players, senior guard Lauren Langendefer, to a knee injury. NDC coach Katie Hine said that game and the loss of a leader was not far from her players' minds on Thursday.
"Urbana beat us less than a week ago and it was a really bad loss," she said. "Effort level I thought, and I think [the team] can attest, it just wasn't there."
The Falcons made sure that was not a problem at the Civic Center, topping Urbana (13-15) in nearly every statistical category. Rebounding, however, is where Hine said she thought her team won the game as NDC outrebounded the Blue Knights 63-29 and held a 26-8 advantage on the offensive glass.
"That was a focus area for us today," Hine said. "To me, that won us the game."
Notre Dame's Martha Nagbe, last season's conference player of the year, led the Falcons with 21 points, 12 rebounds and seven assists and was one of three players, along with Hope Thorbahn (16 points and 12 rebounds) and Kelsey Miller (13 points and 11 rebounds), to finish with a double-double in the win.
Kennedy Boggs led Urbana with 15 points but was one of three Blue Knights with at least five turnovers. As a team, Urbana turned the ball over 23 times and only attempted two foul shots.
"We knew coming in they were going to want to get us back from last Saturday," Urbana coach Haley Ducey said. "23 turnovers and [allowing] 26 offensive rebounds at this level, it's going to be hard to win.
"We're a real good free throw shooting team. I don't know if we were tentative or scared. I knew playing here that we don't play good on tight rims. I told the girls, 'Get used to these rims,' and we struggled. The officials let us play. When we only shoot the ball two times and it's in the first half and we don't get to the line, it's tough to win."
Being able to drive the lane and getting to the foul line played a large part in Urbana's regular-season win against Notre Dame, and Nagbe said it was a point of emphasis to not allow that to happen again in the tournament.
"We've been working a lot on being helpside [defense]," she said. "Last week when we played them we just gave them open lanes and they had layup after layup. We switched that up and we were really focused on being there and helping our teammates out."
Notre Dame advances to Saturday's semifinal round, where the Falcons will play second-seeded Wheeling Jesuit. The teams split their regular-season meeting, with Jesuit taking a 73-72 win on Nov. 23 in Wheeling and the Blue Knights winning 74-62 on Feb. 25.