Denim Millward
Sports Editor
In the final home game of their Idaho State basketball tenures, seniors Jasmine Lemon and Rebecca Schrimpsher both came up big.
Lemon made a driving layup with 30 seconds left, giving the Bengals a crucial two-score lead, and Schrimpsher came up with a key stolen pass that clinched the 63-56 victory for the Bengals against the Weber State Wildcats Saturday at Reed Gym.
“I think it epitomizes their careers,” head coach Seton Sobolewski told ISU Sports Information following the game. “They are both really good players and they were both great representatives of our university and our program. I am really happy for them.”
Junior guard Apiphany Woods was one of four Bengals in double figures and led the team in scoring with 14 points.
Anna Lee Policicchio had 13 points and five rebounds, freshman Megan Hochstein chipped in 10 and Schrimpsher added 10 points of her own along with the game-sealing steal.
“It was a fun and enjoyable game,” Schrimpsher said to ISU Sports Information. “We played great as a team. Our mentality was different today. We were able to keep them off the offensive boards better in this game. We learned from the mistakes we made in the last game against them.”
The first contest to which Schrimpsher was referring was the Feb. 7 game in Ogden, Utah. The score in that game was nearly identical, albeit with the winning team switched around, as the Wildcats downed the Bengals 63-57 in that game.
“We wanted to pay Weber back for the tough loss we had at their house,” Woods said to ISU Sports Information after the game. “We wanted to go out there and play hard and play for our seniors.”
The win put the Bengals at 8-8 in the Big Sky Conference, currently good for sixth place. The top eight teams in the conference at season’s end will advance to the Big Sky Conference tournament, where the winner will earn a berth into the NCAA National Championship tournament.
Though the Bengals have a great shot at making the conference tournament thanks to two crucial wins in the past two weeks against Montana State and Weber State, the Bengals have not yet clinched a guaranteed playoff spot thanks to a logjam at the middle of the conference standings.
Northern Arizona sits just below Idaho State in seventh place, albeit with an identical 8-8 conference record.
Montana State currently holds the eighth and final spot in the conference tournament with a conference record of 8-9.
Southern Utah, Idaho and Weber State each have a 6-10 conference record.
With two games to go and two games ahead of the trio of 6-10 teams, it’s not impossible for the Bengals to lose their conference tournament spot.
The Bengals end the season with two road games. They head to Cheney, Washington March 5 to take on Eastern Washington, then closing out the regular season two days later with a contest against the University of Idaho in Moscow.
