The Lady Indians will return to the Final Four of the NJCAA D1 Women's Tournament for the first time since 2015 when they went on to win the Championship.
Trailing 40-36, once again the Lady Indians needed someone to step up in the fourth quarter, one night after needing a big three-pointer at the buzzer from Shimei Muhammad to advance. This time, sophomore De'Myla Brown made sure there would be no need for late heroics, scoring thirteen of her game-high 27 points in the final period and giving the Lady Indians a 55-49 victory over Tyler Junior College.
With 7:31 remaining in the game, Brown's jumper put the Lady Indians up for good and went on to push the lead up to ten points in thae waning moments of the game. Whereas free throws haunted the Lady Indians in the previous night's fourth quarter misstep, Chipola was a solid 6-0f-8 in the final period of play.
Chipola got off to a quick start, racing out to a 17-4 lead in the first eight minutes of the game. Tyler closed out the quarter with on a 7-0 run to cut into the Chipola lead. After the first ten minutes of play, Chipola led 17-11 and held the high scoring Apaches to just 23.5 % shooting in the first quarter.
The scoring slowed down in the second quarter as both teams struggled to get anything going. The Apache ladies outscored the Lady Indians 12-7 in the second quarter to cut the lead to one, 24-23, as both teams headed to the locker room.
In the third quarter, Tyler began to take the game over and led by as many as seven midway through the quarter.
"The kids got away from running our stuff there for a little bit in the middle of all that, but we got back to doing what we do best and going with our own identity," head coach Greg Franklin said. "You can't do anything different when you get out here. I think that's usually the team that winds up winning it all is the one that keeps its identity once they get out here. We'll have to make some adjustments because Trinity Valley is a good club."
The last time the Lady Indians lost a game at the National Tournament was to their next opponent. Trinity Valley defeated Chipola, 65-60, in the quarterfinals of the 2017 NJCAA Championship, the Lady Indians' last appearance in the tournament. The #2 seed and eight-time national champion Cardinals advanced to the Final Four after defeating #7 seed Shelton State, 70-62, in the quarterfinals.
Chipola and Trinity Valley will meet Friday night at 6 PM with the winner moving on to the National Championship game on Satuday afternoon.