Saturday harkened back to the days of the non-conference season this year for Omaha. Games where the Mavericks were rolling, where Omaha was a ton of fun to watch, and where you wondered what this team was capable of. After a rough slide through conference play that left us wishing to see the Mavericks of the first half of the year they made one final appearance.
Jamie Nash was so spectacular in this game. I’m not even afraid to say it, this was her BEST performance over the last two years. She did everything right for Omaha on Saturday. Tenacious on defense with three steals, she was even better on offense where she went 7-11 from the field and 3-3 from three go put up 17 points. She had 12 assists including a number that I was amazed she could even get to the teammates, weaving passes through Kansas City’s helpless defenders. She even had a season low of 1 turnover. If you had to play one last game, this was it.
Paige Frauendorfer was great too. She’s had less up-and-down performances this year so her 22 points, nine rebounds, five assists, and four steals don’t look quite as good compared to her season as a whole, but still looking through the season I don’t find a better performance this season. She was very unselfish and probably could have made a run at a career high in points but didn’t force her shot in the second half when she could have tried to.
Carolyn Blair-Mobley started a bit slow but her 13 points, five rebounds, three assists, and there steals still were quite the stat line. She might not have been her long but her single year contribution was about as good as we’ve seen at Omaha in a long time.
Carly Cator had one of her better games of the conference season with two points, three rebounds, and an assist. She hasn’t put up spectacular numbers but she’s always provided solid minutes and doesn’t make mistakes. Something you need on a team like this.
Taijhe Kelly did her thing again with five blocks, eight rebounds, and four points. She ended up with the best ever year of blocking shots in school history. I don’t worry about totals, she was limited to 28 games, instead I look at the average where she became the first Maverick EVER to block over 2.6 blocks per game in a season. She’s 3rd in the country in block rate (she blocks 10.26% of opponent’s 2FG attempts while on the court) and the prospect of two more years of her is hard to think of.
The situation for the women is quite different than for the men. While the men had some strong games, they still lost 20 games and will be looking to next year when they bring back four starters and look to improve on the year.
The women on the other hand lose four starters and so much of their production. It will be a huge challenge to replace all of that next year when no one on the roster is jumping out as obvious replacements. Omaha’s bench didn’t do much this year, and while that doesn’t mean they can’t next year it does mean there’s a lot of uncertainty.
For the women it was all about this year and they showed that Omaha is capable of competing at this level. Omaha finished 7-9 but they could easily have been at .500 or above with two of their last four losses coming down to the final second. The Mavericks will need to find the next Jamie Nash and Paige Frauendorfer, but when they do there’s no doubt that the team can be successful. Omaha just took two Division 2 recruits and they blossomed into All-Summit level players. With the ability to recruit at a higher level due to the move to D1 and success of a team like this I think you’ll see the program rebound quickly. Maybe not next year, but certainly over the next few.
I was hoping for a win like this to end the year so much. I wasn’t sure we’d get it and in my wildest dreams I never thought it would be THAT good. It was like a montage at the end of a movie where you get to see all the best parts one last time. The excitement on the faces and the great crowd support were awesome to see and left everyone with a really great taste from this season. What a season it was.
It was Over When: Almost any time at halftime or later you knew this was meant to be. Pick the layup by Jamie Nash that made it 46-23 with 14:51 left for the sake of having a moment.
Player of the Game: Jamie Nash gets it one last time. Both her and Frauendorfer were fantastic, but Nash was probably just a bit more top class.
Season Total:
Paige Frauendorfer (10)
Carolyn Blair-Mobley (7)
Jamie Nash (5)
Taijhe Kelly (4)
Cathleen Cox (1)
Casse Vaughn (1)
Efficiency Ratings:
Jamie Nash – 31
Paige Frauendorfer – 27
Carolyn Blair-Mobley – 16
Taijhe Kelly – 10
Carly Cator – 4
Casse Vaughn – 2
Stacia Gebers – 1
Ericka House – 1
Allison Jackson – 1
Myhiah Dotzler – 0
Kate Bayes – 0
Season Average:
Paige Frauendorfer – 14.9
Carolyn Blair-Mobley – 12.4
Jamie Nash – 10.0
Taijhe Kelly – 7.8
Ericka House – 5.6
Casse Vaughn – 4.8
Carly Cator – 3.1
Stacia Gebers – 2.5
Cathleen Cox – 2.4
Kate Bayes – 1.4
Myhiah Dotzler – 0.8
Allison Jackson – 0.7
Team Ratings: Pace was not horrible, Omaha was great on both ends. Shooting – good, turnovers – good, rebounding – average, passing – fantastic, free throws – didn’t matter.
Possessions: 65
Offensive Points per Possession : 1.05
Defensive Points per Possession : 0.61
eFG%: 50.8%
Turnover Rate: 13.9%
Offensive Rebounding: 31.0%
Defensive Rebounding: 71.4%
A/B%: 78.6%
Floor%: 52.1%
FT Prod: 8.1
Response to 3 things to watch:
1) Race to 50? – Omaha won the race to 50 and thus won. Of course they didn’t need nearly 50… And they won the race to 60. Awesome.
2.) Rebounding Advantage – Omaha didn’t really do a great job here actually as they were not at the level I thought they could be at. Thankfully the shooting disparity was so high it didn’t matter.
3.) Senior Day – You really felt there was an inspired performance by the seniors and they stepped up and got a win to end their careers.
Prediction Response: Didn’t think Omaha could break out of their cold shooting that well, and they did it against a Kansas City team which isn’t all that bad on defense usually.
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