Union students and fans alike showed up in full force at Fred DeLay Gymnasium on Monday night for the Lady Bulldogs’ NCAA Division II Sweet 16 matchup against Valdosta State, and so did the best player in the country.
Here’s the thing: great players show up in big games and will their teams to victory. Union’s senior guard Chelsey Shumpert is a great player. Union won the game 74-73 behind an inexorable, 30-point output from Shumpert which included the game’s tying and winning free throws with under five seconds left.
Despite the win, though, it looked like Valdosta had Union’s number early on. The Lady Bulldogs looked un-Union-like in the first quarter, giving up 22 points and five threes while only making one three of their own.
The packed house at the Fred fell nearly silent when Maddie Corazza hit a layup to give the Blazers an 11 point lead. Union head coach Mark Campbell didn’t bat an eye though.
“I’ve never had a guard that when things get difficult, that’s when she’s at her best like [Shumpert],” Campbell said. “It’s given everyone else confidence to not freak out and know we’re gonna get back in the game.”
With under a minute left in the half, Shumpert ignited both her team and the crowd when she leapt over Kenya Samone’ Dixon, Valdosta’s senior forward who has four inches on Shumpert, grabbed an offensive board and took a foul.
Union’s home crowd came out in the second half with chants seemingly as loud as a Nashville Predators game, if less rehearsed. Union fought back and tied the game at the end of the third quarter, and the student section never took a seat after that. The two loud stomps of 1800 fans between shouts of “DE-FENSE” could be both heard and felt anywhere in the Penick Academic Complex anytime the Blazers had the ball in the fourth.
After Valdosta took a one-point lead with just 12 seconds left, everyone in the gym knew the ball was going to Shumpert and that she was going to attack the basket. Still, the Blazers couldn’t stop her without fouling, and, like any great player would do, Shumpert hit the free throws to give her team a South Region title and send them to the next round.
The Lady Bulldogs will play Carson Newman in the Elite Eight in South Dakota at 2:30 p.m. CDT on Monday with a spot in the Final Four on the line. Regardless of the outcome next week, though, this one is already an instant classic.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Steve Beverly, who was the voice of the Bulldogs during their last five National Championship runs, “this will go down as one of the great games to ever be played on this floor.”
