By By Marty Stamper/The Meridian Star
March 22, 2001
SALINA, Kan. College coaches love the NJCAA Women's National Basketball Championship when it comes to looking for players.
One of the more familiar faces at Wednesday's games was former Winston Academy standout Matthew Mitchell who coached at Copiah Academy before becoming an assistant coach at the University of Florida.
Among the big-name schools represented are Massachusetts, St. John's, Oklahoma, Arizona, Oregon, South Florida, Virginia Tech, DePaul, Arkansas, Ole Miss, Colorado, Ohio State, Memphis, Miami, TCU, East Carolina, Louisiana-Lafayette, Penn State, UC-Santa Barbara, Syracuse, Maryland, Indiana, Oklahoma State, and Seton Hall.
Many more smaller four-year schools had coaches in attendance.
Atta girl: Top performers in Wednesday's games included former Cleveland East Side 6-foot-8 standout Amie Williams who had 27 points, 20 rebounds, and three blocked shots in Southwest Tennessee's 72-63 loss to Eastern Oklahoma State. Larisha Graves of Yazoo County added 11 points and eight rebounds for the Memphis team.
Jennifer Shaw led Eastern Oklahoma with 19 points and 15 rebounds. The victorious Lady Mountaineers also had a 55-46 rebounding advantage.
Danielle McKinley had 20 points and Rasheeda Love tossed in 18 to lead John A. Logan College of Illinois to a 76-61 win over Iowa Western. Latoya Robinson, who played at Pisgah High School, had three rebounds and a blocked shot for the Lady Vols.
Brenda Sindelar had 12 points and nine rebounds for Iowa Western. Tiffany Hicks tossed in 13 points.
Tabitha Ruth had 17 points and Brandy Fowler added 13 points and 13 rebounds to lead Louisburg (N.C.) College to a 67-66 overtime win over Western Nebraska in an elimination game.
Carissa Goeglein had 15 points, while Awa Diop had 13 points and 10 rebounds for Western Nebraska.
Syreeta Bromfield scored 16 points to lead Tallahassee (Fla.) Community College to a 56-50 win over defending national champion Tyler (Texas) Junior College.
Aiysha Smith and Sholanda Pipkin both had 12 for Tyler.
N'Kiesa Richardson scored 17 points and Miklannet Tennal added 14 to lead local favorite Cloud County (Kan.) to a 58-39 win over Cincinnati (Ohio) State.
The 97 combined points barely avoided setting a new record for fewest scored in the tournament. Tyler beat Southwestern Illinois 57-39 for 96 total points in last year's championship game.
Cincinnati's 39 points matches Southwestern Illinois for fewest scored by a team.
Whole lotta wins: Louisburg (N.C.) College has 35 NJCAA tournament wins, second only to Central Arizona.
The Hurricanes will face the East Central-Central Arizona winner Friday at noon.
Just setting them up: In its first-round state tournament game, Tallahassee (Fla.) Community College shot just 8-of-44 from the field in the first half and trailed by 19 points in the second half before rallying to beat Miami-Dade 79-75 in overtime.
In their three state (Region 8) tournament games, the Lady Eagles went to the free-throw line 105 times, making 76 (72.4 percent).
Going out on top: Tallahassee's 6-foot sophomore Syreeta Bromfield is her school's career scoring leader with 1,031 points and needs only three rebounds to be the school's career leader in that category.
Marty Stamper is a sports writer for The Meridian Star. E-mail him at mstamper@themeridianstar.com.