Yep, the ladies were visibly tight last night. LG had a few games this year where their shooting percentage wasn't great but even then the shots would look good and just spin out usually. Last night there were a ton of open shots that were either air-balls or banged hard off the glass. About midway through the 1st half and only trailing by 9, I thought that they had a legitimate chance to make a close game out of it in the 2nd half when they settled down a bit and started shooting with confidence (and I figured ND wouldn't continue to make every jumpshot they put up...ha).
I think the LG play better when they have that sense of urgency and play a little more uptempo. In contrast to the @EWU and @MSU losses where it appeared to me the LG came out flat-footed and uninterested (leading to their offensive struggles and not getting to loose balls), this tightness was kind of a surprise since the LG were definitely a huge underdog and had nothing to lose. Plus, LG had played an undefeated Top 25 AP team (Princeton), an athletic team from the ACC (Wake Forest), a 20+ win WCC team (Pacific), a rival middle-of-the-pack MWC team (Wyoming), and the Big Sky had a couple of teams ranked in the mid-major polls this season (UND and EWU), so they had played a relatively good schedule for a mid-major.
But, anyways, the LG had another good year overall and don't need to feel bad about this loss as ND looks to have a pretty good chance to win it all.
As for the men, I think they came out confident enough (Gregory and Gfeller shot a combined 50% from the perimeter), which helped keep them in the game early in the 2nd half.
