EVANS: Long's performance one to remember
CLEVELAND - I was going to be mad about a women’s basketball game.
I had just driven three and a half hours – I didn’t drive, a colleague did – but I was in the car and hoping to be able to stay in Cleveland for at least a couple of days.
The CMU women’s basketball team was playing its quarterfinal game against Buffalo, a team they had lost to earlier in the season but should have beaten.
This time it was for all the marbles. The single-elimination tournament format allows for no mistakes and no second chances.
As I am sitting courtside waiting for the game to start I start to think, what if they lose? I just rode in a car for three and a half hours just to see them lose to a team they should beat. Nearly half way through the first half the team was down by six points, they were missing bad shots and, quite frankly, looked a little nervous.
And just as I started to think they could lose the game, there she was.
The senior. Shonda Long.
I could sit here and tell you about how she leads the team in scoring and how this could have been her last game as a Chippewa, but she was not going to let that happen.
The team struggled shooting early on, so she drove the lane.
After the jitters left, the 3’s started to rain.
Long and her NBA-type range tied the MAC tournament record with seven 3-pointers made. Did I mention she scored 40 points?
The single-game scoring record in CMU school history now belongs to Shonda Long. Her 40 points on Wednesday afternoon’s 90-69 win over Buffalo was a career high.
Long, with help from freshman Niki DiGuilio, lifted the team to a new level. With senior leader Kaihla Szunko on the bench because of foul trouble, someone desperately needed to step up.
Long and DiGuilio went on a tear and locked into a zone only those two could enter.
The Chippewas went on a 22-4 run to close out the half, 14 of those points coming from DiGuilio. Long and DiGuilio finished the half with 17 points each, leaving Buffalo without answers.
It is a good thing there is a halftime break because CMU was hitting its stride and it could have gotten even uglier.
The second half belonged to Long. As she approached her career high with nine minutes left in the game the question became, “will she do it?”
After she passed her career high for points, it shifted toward, “can she break the single-game record?”
With about four minutes to go in the game, Long was sitting at 37 points, one point shy of the single-game scoring record in CMU history. She was limping toward the bench, holding her leg that was cramping at the worst possible moment.
A couple drinks of Gatorade later and Long was back in the game, and with 2:16 left to play, Szunko found Long on the wing for an open look.
An open look for Long is like giving candy to a kid. She knocked it down, nothing but net like most of her 3’s.
She had done it. A 40-point performance for the ages.
Now, CMU awaits the challenge of facing Bowling Green on Friday in the semifinals of the MAC tournament. A team that beat CMU earlier this year, 90-62, in Bowling Green. A team that held Long to just seven points.
But what Bowling Green doesn’t know is that this is a different CMU team than the last time they met.
Expect the seniors to leave it all on the floor just like they have done all season, because in this tournament there is no tomorrow.
