By TEDDY ALLEN, Journal Sports

RUSTON — The way Thursday night’s opening round game of the 2022 WNIT ended — a 63-52 loss to visiting Houston — wasn’t what Louisiana Tech wanted, although a quick study of the postgame box score might have suggested otherwise.

The Lady Techsters, whose late regular-season run earned them the championship of Conference USA’s West Division, turned the ball over 17 times, gave up 14 offensive rebounds and collected only four, got just two second-chance points compared to the Cougars’ 18, and gave up 12 fast break points; Tech scored none.

“Tomorrow,” Lady Techsters head coach Brooke Stoehr said, “is the worst day of the year” — and then she stopped, abruptly, just as her team’s season had only a few moments before, and began processing the unavoidable reality of an ending.

“I didn’t want to close it out (tonight) for the last time,” she said after a brief moment. “Not with this group. Man, they’ve been special. I’ve been around a lot of teams and some big wins and have a lot of great memories, but I’ve enjoyed this group more than any I’ve been around.”

The Lady Techsters lost a probable starter in preseason and played through the winter with two freshman starters and mostly new faces. And yet the team rallied to win eight of its final 10 regular season games and the West, then two more games in postseason before falling in the CUSA Tournament finals.

But unfortunately for Tech, that’s not the team that showed up for the WNIT in Thomas Assembly Center to play Houston, 16-15 coming in and 7-9 finishers in the American Athletic Conference. Instead, Tech played like the other team it also was, the one that started the conference season 0-4, the one that lost games to Rice when the Owls were 0-5 in the league, the one that lost to last-place UTSA, the one that lost two close back-to-back games to Southern Mississippi.

It didn’t play like the team that went 12-2 at home.

“We didn’t have our best tonight,” said Stoehr, whose team finished 21-11 and in the WNIT for the first time since 2018. “It’s hard to put into words.”

Houston built its biggest advantage of the first half to nine, a spread cut by a Salma Bates drive and lay-up to make it 35-28 at the break. The Cougars built the lead by scoring 10 second-chance points to Tech’s 0, by grabbing eight offensive rebounds to Tech’s two, and by taking advantage of 11 Tech turnovers.

In that tell-tale first half, Tech shot 50 percent from the field, kept the visitors scoreless from three (0-8), and played good defense in half court – but gave up 10 fast break points and, because of the turnovers and offensive boards allowed, essentially handed the Cougars half their points.

“I wanted so badly for us to get on a little run,” Stoehr said of the second half. And, for anyone who could remember Tech’s fourth-quarter comeback against Middle Tennessee State in the CUSA Tournament semis, such a comeback seemed possible.

Except the run never came. The closest thing to a rally Tech could create, besides Bates’ layup in the final second of the first half, was her three-pointer at the third-quarter buzzer to cut Houston’s lead to six, 49-43.

It was as close as Tech would get. The big run, the big play, the big Houston mistake — not a one ever came. The Cougars kept the lead between nine and 11 much of the fourth quarter and twice led by 13.

Keiunna Walker led Tech in scoring with 18. Anna Larr Roberson, who played only 25 minutes because of foul trouble, had 11 and Bates had 10.

Houston, making its fourth straight appearance in the WNIT, has now won five of its last seven games and advances. Star guard Laila Blair scored 12, just below her average, but Bria Patterson with 18 and Tiara Young with 17 each doubled their average points-per-game output.

And so the Lady Techsters will wake up Friday to the “worst day of the year,” but so will every other team that doesn’t win its last game. What Stoehr’s young team can take from their unlucky St.-Patrick’s-Day-night experience, she said, is “fuel and motivation into the offseason.”

“I don’t want them to look at tonight and think, ‘This is our season,’” Stoehr said.

And it wasn’t. A loss can’t erase 21 wins, a division title and a league tournament runner-up finish. The eve of “the worst day of the year” might have seen the play of a team that showed up a few other times during the season, a young team that was one player, maybe even just one season, short of something special.

Next winter will tell.

Photo by SADIE PATTON, Louisiana Tech

JOURNAL SPORTS

NATCHITOCHES – The free bases and big innings the Northwestern State baseball team had become accustomed to in the first four games of its current homestand were still there Thursday afternoon.

Unfortunately for the Demons, visiting South Dakota State was the one who benefited.

The Jackrabbits used a pair of big innings – one early and one late – to power a 16-2 win in the opener of a four-game series. Northwestern had rolled up 76 runs while allowing just 12 in a sweep of a three-game series with Alcorn State last weekend, and a 21-7 laugher over Lamar Tuesday.

But the tables turned completely around Thursday.

“We were pretty poor today,” sixth-year head coach Bobby Barbier said. “We were pretty poor on the mound. Their guy was pretty good, and we just couldn’t get to him. This shows you what it looks like when you don’t show up. That’s pretty indicative of today. You get an eight spot in the second inning, and that’s hard to overcome, especially when you have three more games this weekend. Hopefully, we’ll see what we’re about and come out ready to play (Friday).”

The Demons (7-10) saw their season-long, four-game win streak come to an end in a flurry of hit batters and timely hits by the Jackrabbits (5-10).

The series continues with a 2 p.m. doubleheader today at Brown-Stroud Field, and wraps up Saturday to accommodate SDSU’s travel home.

Photo by CHRIS REICH, Northwester State

By DOUG IRELAND, Journal Sports

It was One Really Huge Shining Moment, still frozen in time 16 years later to this day, the product of four years of coaching, training, perseverance and faith in each other.

No matter what the future holds for Northwestern State basketball without Mike McConathy, it’s beyond imagination anything will compare to the events on St. Patrick’s Day 2006, outside of Detroit, at The Palace at Auburn Hills, the home of the NBA’s Detroit Pistons. In a first-round NCAA Tournament game, McConathy’s 14th-seeded Demons rallied from 17 points down with 8:32 remaining and stunned No. 3-seeded Iowa, the Big Ten Conference Tournament champions, 64-63.

Minutes earlier, photographer Doug Daniels, from Peoria, Ill., settled into his assigned spot on the lower-seeded team’s baseline, and decided to pop a few test shots for the upcoming Southern Illinois-Pittsburgh game. Two days later, checking his photo card, he found a gem, a Rockwellian scene, the kind that needed no words.

Good thing. Words to explain that moment seemed inadequate then, and for some, even now.

The Hawkeyes, ranked 15th nationally, coached by 1984 USA Olympic star Steve Alford, were popular picks to make a long tournament run. Instead, it was the Demons who were the toast of March Madness.

It was decided by a slender 6-foot-3 senior, Lakeside High product Jermaine Wallace, raised in Heflin. Wallace hustled to rebound a teammate’s miss from the opposite wing in the closing seconds, collected it, dribbled out past the 3-point arc to the left corner and launched the game-winning shot. It dropped through with half a second left.

“Cinderella Wears Purple!” read a sign waved by one prescient NSU fan in the stands.

Wallace being in that spot, positioned to collect an offside rebound from a 3-pointer on the right wing, was no accident. It was instilled through rebounding drills taught by McConathy and his assistants, Dave Simmons and Mark Slessinger, regularly since Wallace and his classmates arrived on campus four years earlier.

Wallace making the shot also had some foreshadowing.

“We came from 20 down at halftime and won in OT at Mississippi State in December, and two nights later, were horrible at Centenary,” said McConathy. “Jermaine hit the same shot from the same corner to save us. He had done it before, at Southeastern in his sophomore year, and at the halftime buzzer somewhere else along the way.”

It wasn’t designed. But it was Destiny.

It’s been celebrated, by national fan voting, as one of the greatest moments, and in fact, greatest games, in March Madness. It’s been part of a script in a CBS soap opera, it was the focal point of a Buffalo Wild Wings commercial, and it’s a defining event in the lives of those who were on, and around, the 2005-06 Demons – a team that instantly became known as “the Demons of Destiny,” thanks to NSU radio announcer Patrick Netherton.

It was a team four years in the making. A year after NSU’s first NCAA Tournament trip, which featured a 71-67 victory over Winthrop in the first-ever Opening Round Game in Dayton, Ohio, the Demons signed a 12-member 2002 recruiting class. The freshmen of 2002-03 won just six games, and only 11 as sophomores. But their final two years brought 47 wins and a pair of Southland Conference championships to Northwestern, and ultimately, lasting fame.

“With the transfer portal, it will never happen again,” said McConathy. “The most powerful thing was seeing a group stay with the plan you and your coaches outlined four years earlier. That team pushed through the rocky times, kept the faith, over four years, and in that game. They were bonded together, and in that moment, it was all validated.”

Two of the Demons of Destiny, Marcellas Ross and Keenan Jones, have died too young. The others are parents, hard-working members of their communities. Now, their coach has retired, and will be a doting grandfather who will redirect a tireless work ethic into other endeavors.

Wednesday, Mike McConathy was mowing grass at the family homestead, a Bienville Parish farm six miles as the crows fly from where Bonnie and Clyde met their end May 23, 1934. His late father, John “Hound” McConathy, remembered hearing the roar of the gunfire in his Depression Era childhood.

Conversely, the roars Mike McConathy experienced have never been louder than in The Palace at Auburn Hills on a chilly St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2006.

Photo by DOUG DANIELS

By TEDDY ALLEN, Journal Sports

RUSTON — The dependable, poised play of Louisiana Tech sophomore guard and Tulane transfer Salma Bates — they call her ‘Sal’ for short — has gone a long way in earning her Lady Techsters a spot against the Houston Cougars in tonight’s opening round of the 2022 Women’s National Invitation Tournament at 6 in the Thomas Assembly Center.

“Smart and cool,” teammate Silvia Nativi said of her point guard.

“Tough, but calm,” Assistant A.D. for Strategic Communications Kyle Kavanaugh said of Bates, a three-time state champ at John Curtis. “To me she’s the quintessential New Orleans-type player.”

“Heady. Unselfish. So steady,” assistant coach Scott Stoehr said. “Just what this team needed.”

Bates and the gang started the Conference USA season 0-4 before they began “to understand each other,” Bates said. “I felt we’d get it together. We basically had all first-year players, two freshmen in the starting lineup. …

“When we started practice, we got along a lot faster than I thought we would,” said Bates of a team that would weather some dramatic ups and downs. “I knew we had the potential to be good. I believed in all these girls.”

The Lady Techsters (22-10, 11-7) found their rhythm late and won eight of their last 10 regular season games to clinch the CUSA West Division title. Bates’ “calmness on the floor,” Stoehr said, and her “understanding of the personalities on the court” were big reasons for Tech’s strong finish and ability to rebound from tough losses to lesser teams earlier in the season.

“That,” Stoehr said, “and her knack for hitting big shots.”

Bates canned buckets at quarter buzzers in wins over North Texas, Sam Houston State and UAB, when she knocked down a pair of 3’s — one at the first-quarter horn — to help lift Tech to a 20-12 lead on the way to an 82-56 win that clinched the West.

The biggie buzzer beater was in late November against Boise State when she drained a three-pointer as time expired to give Tech a 60-57 win on her way to making the All-Tournament Team in the Rocky Mountain Hoops Classic.

Lost somewhere in the middle of all these heroics is the precise instant when Voice of the Lady Techsters Kyle Roberts, in an inspired moment of artistic vocal wizardly, blurted out, “Buzzer Beater Bates!”

It fits.

Then again, there have been moments subtler but just as big. Like in the CUSA semifinal when Tech outscored Middle Tennessee 34-15 in the fourth quarter to erase its biggest deficit of the season and win, 80-72. On her way to a 12-points, 4-assists night, it was Bates, with some big buckets late in the third quarter, who kept Tech within striking distance.

But while her flair for the dramatic is nice, it’s her focus on the ordinary that’s necessary.

“I need to be on the floor for us to be successful,” said the quick-to-smile Bates, who found a second home at Tech after two years at Tulane. “I know how to get us going; it’s my job to make them look good and set them up.”

Her solid 7.8-points-a-game average is third on the team behind shooting guard Keiunna Walker (19) and forward Anna Larr Roberson (15.3). Both made the league’s all-tournament team; Tech finished second, dropping the title game to East Division champ Charlotte, 68-63.

Tonight it’s Houston, 16-15 and 7-9 in the American Athletic Conference, a program playing in its fourth consecutive WNIT.

“Play our game and stay confident,” Bates said of the keys to beating the Cougars. “We need to use this game to get our momentum back from the Charlotte game.”

Photo courtesy LOUISIANA TECH

By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL, Journal Sports

Kansas City may not be a premier travel destination for many people, but for the LSUS men’s basketball team, it’s as good as it gets. Especially since they’ve been there 18 straight years.

“Let’s just say we know all the good places to east,” said head coach Kyle Blankenship, who has been there for 10 of those 18 trips.

Once again, the Pilots find themselves in the “City of Fountains,” but they are looking to do a little more than toss a few coins in the water. LSUS will open play Friday in the 2022 NAIA men’s basketball national championship at historic Municipal Auditorium, which was built in 1935 and has hosted more Final Fours (9) than any other arena.

By now, the Pilots should know every part of that building, but they are really looking for wherever it is the championship trophy is being kept. They’ve come close, but so far LSUS hasn’t brought that piece of hardware back to Shreveport.

Still, just getting to Kansas City has certainly been an accomplishment for this year’s team.

“You never take winning for granted,” Blankenship said. “Winning is hard. And to win year after year is even harder. When you make it to the national tournament, that’s the hardest thing of all to do. This has been one of the most satisfying years I’ve ever been a part of. It didn’t start out the way we wanted, but we never quit and never stopped believing and found a way to get here.”

The Pilots will take on Oklahoma Wesleyan at 1 p.m. Friday as part of the Sweet 16 that will determine the national champion. Oklahoma Wesleyan is the No. 1 seed in that part of the bracket and LSUS is No. 5; Loyola (New Orleans) is the overall No. 1 seed.

“Every year our goal is to play in the national tournament, but if you had asked me back in November whether we were going to keep that streak going, I probably would have questioned you,” Blankenship said. “Our guys have really bought in over the last two months on what we are trying to do and what LSUS basketball is all about. We’ve shown a lot of heart, toughness and togetherness to get to where we are today.”

Blankenship played at LSUS for a year after transferring from Tulsa. He became an assistant coach under Chad McDowell, who was also his coach at Byrd High, and then returned as head coach when McDowell became athletic director.

What Blankenship has accomplished is no surprise to McDowell, now the school superintendent at Calvary Baptist Academy.

“He’s hard to beat with all of the controllables,” McDowell said. “When it comes to game prep, in-game adjustments, game management, scouting, knowing strengths and weaknesses, plays coming out of timeouts, time and score … all the things a coach can control, Kyle Blankenship is going to be hard to beat.”

McDowell knew Blankenship had the makings of a coach going back to his high school days as a Yellow Jacket.

“He would spend as much time hanging out with coaches as he would with his peers, just talking basketball,” McDowell said. “You could tell the way he carried himself and the way he could get his teammates into position, he was very selfless player and person. He didn’t have to have his name in the limelight.”

“Shreveport is my home town and we have grown to love LSUS since we’ve become a part of it as a player and as an assistant and head coach,” Blankenship said. “I take a lot of pride in putting on the LSUS gear every single day. I’m just thankful for the support and what everybody does for our program. It is special to do this in a place you call home.”

Even with the ups and downs of the 25-7 season, Blankenship has tried to keep one constant for his team.

“The most important thing we talk about in our program is having fun,” he said. “Every single day, we want to enjoy coming to practice. We want to enjoy spending time around each other and with each other. Winning makes that easy. Sometimes winning can mask a lot of flaws in a program, but we do our best to help these guys enjoy this experience. We just try to be the best we can be, every single day in everything that we do.”

Photo by JOHN JAMES MARSHALL

By DOUG IRELAND, Journal Sports

NATCHITOCHES – Northwestern State’s search producing new athletic director Kevin Bostian took two months. His search for a successor to longtime basketball coach Mike McConathy will take only a week.

McConathy, 66, was lauded at a Tuesday morning event in Prather Coliseum, ending his 23 years running the Demons’ program. Bostian, who took over Northwestern’s athletic department Feb. 7, hopes to introduce the new coach next Tuesday.

Bowlsby Sports Advisors, the same firm that ran NSU’s AD search, was hired Monday afternoon, not long after Bostian met with McConathy. Immediately, Bostian and Kyle Bowlsby compared lists of potential candidates and began trimming the field. As news spread about McConathy’s exit, inquiries began pouring in to Bostian, who is redirecting all to Bowlsby for vetting.

A preliminary list of candidates to interview was set Tuesday morning and the first conversation via Zoom occurred Tuesday night. Demons’ associate head coach Jeff Moore, who anchored McConathy’s staff for 16 years, interviewed Wednesday morning and by midnight, the other early favorites also had Zoom conversations with Bostian and Bowlsby about the job.

This morning, Bostian and Bowlsby will confer to narrow the list to top contenders. Latecomers to the candidate pool will get consideration as warranted, Bostian said.

“The plan as of right now,” he said, “is to bring two finalists to campus Monday, make an offer Monday night and potentially have a press conference next Tuesday afternoon.”

University president Marcus Jones is traveling to France but will be involved, including in Zoom meetings with the finalists, Bostain said.

But any coaching search is fluid, especially one fast-tracked. The short turnaround is vital, he said.

“The reason we have to do that is because of the urgency of the transfer portal, both with our own kids – Kendal (Coleman, NSU’s standout freshman center, who entered the portal Monday afternoon) being one of them – and kids the new coach may look at bringing in.”

What’s the broad description for the next Demons basketball coach?

“I want somebody who has ties to Louisiana and/or Texas, who has a documented pedigree for recruiting, somebody who has successfully recruited high school kids, but has also used the transfer portal. That’s changed college basketball. You can get good, very quickly with that,” Bostian said. “I want somebody who embraces that. You still have to have a foundation, and I think that’s through high school basketball. It has to be somebody who can recruit high schools, junior colleges, and use the portal, and can make all those pieces fit.”

His ideal candidate would have head coaching experience, but Bostian is open-minded on that point.

“It would be nice, but it’s not required,” he said. “We need somebody who’s very personable and knows how to engage recruits and their families, and somebody who can represent Northwestern in the community and in the surrounding area.

“My vision for the program is that we should be competing for our Southland Conference championship every year. We’re not going to win it every year – you never know what happens in those three or four days in March (at the conference tournament, the Southland’s only path to the NCAA Tournament) – but I want to be competitive in the top third or half of the conference year in, year out.

“We’re going to increase our resources for the program, so the expectation is to have a chance to win it every year. That’s the vision,” said Bostian, who indicated the additional financial support will come both from within the university and through outside revenues, including game guarantees.

“There are things Dr. Jones, (executive vice president) Jerry Pierce and I are working on that can help all of our sports, especially football and men’s basketball,” he said.

McConathy’s track record will loom large as his successor is selected.

“Coach McConathy did a great job in fundraising and so many other areas, and we need to expand upon that,” Bostian said.

“This job is wanted. Coaches know they can win here, because Coach McConathy did that again and again over time. This is an attractive job, and I’m fully confident we can hire a person who can move our program forward, someone who will be very strong.”

Photo by CHRIS REICH, Northwestern State