By James Storbeck.
On Wednesday night, the BCC women’s basketball team was able to hold off the Shoreline Community College Dolphins by a score of 47-38. This was the third week that the team was fortunate to beat, what should have been easy opponents.
Predicting the outcome of the game was an uncertainty beforehand for BCC’s head coach, Brent Hermanson. “It’s difficult to say, because the last coach that was managing Shoreline the last time we played the quit, so they have a totally new coach, and we don’t have any film on him. I feel confident that we have the players to take care of them … we’re going to have to make adjustments early in the game, after we see what they’re going to do,” he said.
The Bulldogs did seem to be in adjustment mode as they exchanged leads with the Dolphins for the first five minutes of the game.
However, as the half went on, BCC made it difficult for SCC to find open shots, causing two shot clock violations over the course of the first half, as well as several other close calls.
One player who established her presence down low early was freshman forward Amy Rochowiak. Rochowiak’s dominant inside game was able to create five offensive rebounds in the first half, six total, and 10 points.
As Bellevue began to settle in, they went on a rampage, outscoring Shoreline 14-2 over the course of 10 minutes to take an 11-point lead, which they never relinquished.
Coming out of halftime still up by 11, the Bulldogs found themselves facing a different defensive zone scheme than they had faced in the first half. They had some trouble with it, only managing five points in the first eight minutes.
The Bulldog defense, however, cracked down and only allowed two points in the same period of time. Rochowiak continued to flourish, ending the game with a double-double of 17 points and 11 rebounds, as well as two assists.
The Dolphins and the Bulldogs would occasionally trade buckets throughout the second half, getting outscored by the Dolphins 23-21 in the half.
Coming out of the locker room, Hermanson’s frustration was apparent. “I think we played crappy. That’s what I think. I think we came out and went through the motions. This is a team we should beat by thirty. We beat them by what, nine? We didn’t play well at all, they just happen to be a really bad basketball team, and we got away with it. If it had been somebody else we would have gotten blown out of our own gym. So I’m not very happy with the effort. We have some kids that have some issues that didn’t play in the first half, and that hurt our chemistry a little bit, but we weren’t ready to play today.”
On his thoughts of the NWACC tournament, he said, “Well, we have to get there…We have five more games, and we figure we have to win at least three of them, and this [was] the first one.” Wednesday’s win gives the Bulldogs a half of a game lead over Whatcom in third place in the NWACC North, while reducing Peninsula’s second place lead to a game and a half.