Oral Roberts packs all the punches in semifinal

By: Jeff Bartl

Posted: 3/9/05

Westerwinds' coach Leslie Crane called Saturday's game against Oral Roberts University "goon basketball." I call it something that cannot be printed in the WC.

The only time a basketball coach should walk into a postgame press conference having to apologize to the media that her players are at the hospital instead of sitting next to her is if the ceiling collapsed on the team's bench.

The Golden Eagles were anything but golden in their 43-37 semifinal victory in the Mid-Continent Conference Tournament, throwing elbows and cheap shots like it was a scrum in a rugby match.

Crane was right when she said her team could have used helmets and shoulder pads for the game. While she was at it, Crane should have had football coach Don Patterson draw up a 4-3 defense and a pattern of blitz schemes to counter Oral Roberts' style of play.

The tide completely turned when junior center Zane Teilane, who felt the brunt of Oral Roberts' dirty play, was helped off the floor after her front tooth went through her upper lip, sending her to the locker room.

Crane complimented Teilane's courageousness after she returned to the game wearing a blood-free No. 25 jersey. But not even the Mid-Con Player and Defensive Player of the Year could overcome a team that possessed no class when it comes to playing basketball.

The most disappointing aspect of it was that the referees all but encouraged Oral Roberts to play without any regard for hyman life. With the Golden Eagles constantly pushing and shoving Westerwinds on their way to the basket or grabbing and pulling at them while underneath the hoop, the refs turned their heads and swallowed their whistles.

It is sad to see seniors Liga Bergvalde, Rita Castans, Jessica Cook, Kristina Grbic and Orinta Kavaliauskaite end their careers at Western Illinois University this way. Their efforts to help this team reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1994-95 should have been rewarded with much more than a game that belonged on a football field.

I sat and watched as Oral Roberts' coach Jerry Finkbeiner grinning while he complimented one of his partners in crime, Claudia Louis, for her execution of the box-and-one defense attributed to stopping Teilane. But all I could think of was how her defense was more like a boxing match rather than a box-and-one.

Physical play is a part of basketball, but it isn't all of basketball. Hopefully someday soon Oral Roberts will run into a team more physical than it. Then we'll see if Finkbeiner is smiling at the postgame press conference.