Box Score
COLUMBIA, S.C., March 21, 2008 – The North Carolina A&T women’s basketball team put together an historic 2007-08 season that came to an end Friday night with a 102-74 loss to South Carolina at the Colonial Center in the first round of the Women’s National Invitational Tournament.

Amber Bland led the Aggies with 18 points and Brittanie Taylor-James added 16 points and six boards for N.C. A&T. The Gamecocks were led by Jordan Jones who hit a WNIT-record nine 3-pointers and finished with 31 points. Backcourt mate Brionna Dickerson added 25 points on 11-for-13 shooting, and Demetress Adams had 18 points and nine boards.

The Gamecocks, who shot 58.4 percent from the field, advanced to the second-round of the tournament and will face N.C. State Monday night at 7 in Raleigh. For the Aggies, they will go into the off-season however, knowing there were some accomplishments they let slip away from them during the season that only a historic run next season can help them capture.

“I thought we had a terrific season,’’ said head Patricia Cage-Bibbs. “The young ladies did things this year that have not been done in this program in a long time. We had some disappointments at the end. The question I have is; are we going to learn from those disappointments and grow as a team?”

The Aggies won the MEAC regular-season title for the first time in 18 years. They finished the season with a school-record 25 wins and they broke school records in several different statistical categories. In addition, their WNIT appearance was the program’s first postseason game in 14 years.

Over the final three weeks of the season the Aggies have also experienced heartache. They saw their chance at becoming the first team in the program’s history to go undefeated in the MEAC slip away by one point at Hampton on March 3. Twelve days later a Rashida Suber layup with 3.8 seconds remaining in the MEAC Championship Game ended the N.C. A&T’s goal of advancing into the NCAA Tournament.

The consolation prize was the Aggies trip to the University of South Carolina to face the Gamecocks in the WNIT after earning an automatic bid to the tournament as the MEAC regular-season champion. “It was some thought about what happened to us in the MEAC Tournament before this game,’’ said Bland. “We saw this as a great opportunity to play in the postseason, so we had put the MEAC Tournament behind us.”

It appeared early that the Aggies did move forward. The Aggies used their pressure defense to jump out to a 14-6 lead. A series of turnovers and missed jumpers allowed the Gamecocks to get into their transition game where they hurt the Aggies all night. The Gamecocks went on a 13-2 run to take a 19-16 lead with 12:34 remaining in the first half.

Bland cut the lead to one on a short jumper, but a Dickerson three sparked a 16-4 run that gave the Gamecocks a 35-22 advantage with 7:19 remaining in the half. The Aggies still had another push in them, however. Bland and Taylor-James kept the Aggies close and with 2:15 remaining in the first half, Tyronnica Alford’s layup cut the Gamecocks lead to 41-38.

The Aggies had a chance to get even closer, but after a Jalessa Sams steal the Aggies missed a layup. Jones answered with a 3-pointer and the Aggies never recovered. After Alford’s field goal, the Aggies didn’t score again in the first half. Meanwhile, the Gamecocks scored the final seven points of the first half for a 48-38 halftime lead. They also scored the first 10 points of the second half to put the Aggies away.

“We turned them over 25 times, but we didn’t capitalize on it,’’ said Bibbs. “When you see that a team at one point in the game is shooting 70 percent that means they’re getting layups and we’re not getting back on defense. When you’re trying to win in the postseason, you need to play better defense.”

Most of the Aggies wil get a chance to return and play better in the postseason. Nancy Rembert is the only Aggies senior, which means when the 2008-09 season starts there will be expectations on the program that have not been there in a long time.

“Championship teams do championship things,’’ said Bibbs. “Champions hit free throws. Champions block out. Champions rebound the basketball. If we want to win more than just a regular-season championship, we’re going to have to do the things champions do.”