Lubbock, TX - After watching all the other top eight seeds advance to the quarterfinals of the NJCAA Division I Women's Basketball Championship, the pressure was on for No. 6 seed Jones College.
All the Lady Bobcats had to do was beat perennial national championship contender Gulf Coast State in the second round, and it took every last second to do so.
After Gulf Coast tied the game with just over a second left, Sakyia White hit a contested layup at the buzzer for her 19th and final point of the night to go with 17 rebounds, and Jones survived the upset bid by the Lady Commodores for a 71-69 victory Friday night at the Rip Griffin Center.
En'Dya Buford added a game-high 20 points for the Bobcats (26-3) and Meloney Thames chipped in 17 points in the winning effort, which came only after Gulf Coast (25-5) tied the game with 1.2 seconds to play on a three-point play by Tasionna McDowell.
"I can't say enough about our players and their toughness," Jones coach Missy Bilderback said. "It was a game of runs. Gulf Coast, to me, is one of the top five teams in the tournament. We knew it was going to be a tough game. I'm just so proud of our kids, we knew we had to fight and there were moments when we had to battle adversity. A couple of our kids got sick at half … but they toughed it out. I just think our team was not going to let us lose this game."
The win puts Jones into the quarterfinals on Saturday where they will face third-seeded Trinity Valley at 7 p.m. Jones' win means all eight of the top seeds going into the tournament avoided upset bids along the way.
But it wasn't for a lack of trying on Gulf Coast's part. The Commodores had their best chance at pulling the upset when they came out and scored the first eight points of the fourth quarter to take a 55-49 lead with 7:26 to play, four of those points coming from Ciante Downs, who led Gulf Coast with 13 points.
Jones, however, answered right back with an 8-2 run to tie the game at 57 with 5:17 to play, and from there the lead changed swung back and forth.
Two free throws by Buford put Jones up four at 64-60 with 2:37 to play. An Alieghya Bartholomew jumper and a free throw by Victoria Woods pulled Gulf Coast to within one before White hit a jumper to make it 66-63 with 36 seconds left.
Six seconds later, Bartholomew tied the game with a 3-pointer from the left wing. Buford then added three free throws to push the lead back to three a 69-66 – Gulf Coast missing a chance to tie or take the lead when Bartholomew had the ball slip through her hands and out of bounds with 16.9 to play. But that just set up the dramatics for both sides.
"Honestly, in the moment, I don't know what was going through my head," White said. "I just knew if I got the ball I had to finish and try to get it off in time. (The sequence before) was a little frustrating because we knew we couldn't give up a three, but our motto since the start of the tournament has been to rise above, rise above adversity and we knew we just had to come together and play as a team."
Woods added 12 points for the Commodores, Bartholomew 11, and Imani Smith 10 in the losing effort.
Both teams spent the first part of the game feeling each other out before both decided to start playing at a frantic, up-and-down pace. That only favored the Bobcats however as Gulf Coast struggled to shoot the ball in the opening 10 minutes and Jones took advantage.
Tied at 11, the Bobcats reeled off seven straight points, with McDowell and Buford combining for five of those points, giving Jones an 18-11 lead and a 20-12 halftime advantage.
Jones pushed the lead to 24-14 early in the second before Gulf Coast clawed it's way back in it with a 6-0 run. Then, down 28-20, the Commodores went on a 9-2 run to pull to within a point at 30-29. Jones again responded, getting a Sakyia White layup and a jumper by Thames at the buzzer to put the Bobcats up five at the intermission.
White led Jones in the first half with 12 points and Thames added 11, while Bartholomew and Downs led Gulf Coast with six.
