Chapman Women End One Skid

Chapman women’s basketball Coach Mary Hegarty chose to ignore the streak. In four seasons as Panther coach, she had no success against Claremont-Mudd-Scripps: Six games, six losses.

Tuesday night, before Claremont visited Chapman’s Hutton Center, Hegarty spoke to her team only of the most recent loss to the Athenas, a 73-52 beating in December.

“This was the first time,” Hegarty said, “in a couple of years that I didn’t get caught up in the fact we had lost six in a row to them or whatever.”

But Wednesday, a day after the Panthers’ 74-68 overtime victory, Hegarty was more than happy to reflect on the skid that ended: “Talk about a monkey on your back--that was a gorilla.”

The victory was the seventh in eight games for the Panthers (10-4) and came at an opportune time. Tuesday, the first regional polls for NCAA Division III will be released.

Claremont (10-5) is a favorite to win the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and the automatic NCAA playoff bid that comes with that title. Chapman, which is 6-1 against SCIAC teams, and UC San Diego are the top independent teams in California and are hoping for at-large bids in the eight-team regional playoffs.

Chapman had the opportunity to beat Claremont because of the Panthers’ play on the boards. In Claremont’s 21-point victory in December, the Panthers were outrebounded, 56-29; Tuesday, they won the rebounding battle, 50-36.

Especially telling was that the Athenas had only seven offensive rebounds, 11 fewer than their average. “We gave up zero offensive rebounds in overtime,” Hegarty said. “And we had about five. I think that was the difference.”

Hegarty said she was impressed with her team’s perseverance. Chapman scored the first 12 points of the game, but Claremont rallied to take a 14-13 lead and eventually led, 36-31, at halftime.

Chapman got outstanding performances from sophomore forward Lyndsay Brown (20 points, 14 rebounds), freshman forward Lindsay Foss (17 points) and senior guard Flo Luppani (nine points, 10 assists).

Luppani, who had only two turnovers, has averaged eight assists over the past seven games.