Carrie Moore Dancing!

GO BLUEJAYS! GO COACH MOORE!

Creighton Women's Assistant Basketball Coach Carrie Moore is dancing with her Blue Jays!

Tritz, Nelson and the Jays just won the Missouri Valley Conference Championship! Great defensive team. Had to pull off some upsets along the way. GO C-Mo! #33!

"The women of Omaha defeated Drake 53-38 in the final of the Missouri Valley Conference women's basketball tournament Sunday at Family Arena, and, like their male counterparts a week earlier, earned the conference's automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament. The women will learn the identity of their opponent tonight.

The fourth-seeded Bluejays (20-12) have won eight of their last nine games, losing only to Drake (18-15), but had been snake-bitten in the conference tournament. Creighton made its fourth appearance in the final since 2007 but won for the first time under coach Jim Flanery.

"There's no comparison," Flanery said. "It's much different. There's some luck and good fortune involved. We lost those three games by a total of four points."

Counter-intuitively, Flanery said, youth worked to Creighton's advantage this time around, because it was easier to push aside the close calls of the past. Three of his five starters are sophomores.

"We are young and I don't think we feel quite as much pressure because the bulk of our team maybe naively thinks they'll be here again," he said. "Sometimes, when you relax, you play better. We were probably a little more relaxed than the junior/senior teams in the past."

Both teams, though, seemed tight in the first half. Each shot less than 30 percent by halftime, when Creighton held a 20-16 lead. The lead changed hands seven times, and the Bluejays opened their largest lead of the half on the final basket, a 3-pointer by sophomore Jordan Garrison.

"Four presses in four days really wore us down," Drake coach Amy Stephens said. "It was really reflected in our shooting percentage."

Creighton got the deciding nudge from an unlikely source, sophomore McKenzie Fujan. She scored the first 11 points of the second half for the Bluejays, including three 3-pointers. Fujan matched her career high with 12 points and had made just one 3-pointer in the past 14 games. Her outburst was part of a 17-6 run that gave Creighton a 37-22 lead with 13 minutes, 20 seconds remaining.

"Just getting confidence in practice made me think I could do it," Fujan said. "They were playing off of me a lot. I had to recognize that and do what I needed to do."

Drake would not go quietly, though. The Bulldogs responded with a 14-2 run, closing to 39-36 with 6:15 left. Opening the drive was a three-point play from senior Rachael Hackbarth, the conference player of the year. Hackbarth earned her 25th double-double of the season, scoring 15 points and grabbing 14 rebounds Sunday.

"I couldn't be any more proud of this team. I don't think anybody expected us to be in the championship game," said Hackbarth of the seventh-seeded Bulldogs. "I can't speak for everyone, but I still had energy. We had to get into an attack mentality, but it didn't come until it was too late."

Creighton then finished the game on a 12-2 run, with eight points from Carli Tritz, who finished with 19 points. Following her 29-point performance from Saturday's victory over top-seeded Missouri State, Tritz was named the tournament's most outstanding player."

GraceAnne and I had a great time watching what turned out to be a very exciting finish to the season!