MCGILL: Win by women's basketball team means a little bit more

By Chuck McGill

HerdZone.com

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – Sorry, SEC, but the rest of collegiate athletics needs to borrow a hashtag from you.

In month 12 of the coronavirus pandemic and its heavy impact on amateur sports, the sacrifices are immense. The obstacles are significant. The stress, the isolation and the hardships are weightier than ever for those within our world. Administrators, coaches, support staff and student-athletes are weary. Day after day, week after week, month after month of dealing with the virus, testing protocol, contact tracing, budgets and travel are big burdens. Health – physical, mental and emotional – has been paramount.

And then there are slivers of sunshine, rays of hope in which one can bask in for a moment, and like the ice and snow that has enveloped our region this month, everything melts away, if even for a moment.

That is how it felt Sunday afternoon inside the Cam Henderson Center. Taylor Pearson – on her Senior Day – held the basketball near midcourt, tilted her head toward the sky and flashed a toothy grin. Pearson and her teammates had defeated visiting Rice, 68-56, to deliver the Owls their first Conference USA women's basketball defeat this season. Rice had been 41-2 in C-USA play the past three seasons. The Owls were receiving votes in the Top 25 poll because of its stellar season, which featured only one loss – to nationally ranked Texas A&M, a game in which Rice trailed by 1 point inside of a minute left, to a team that also had only one loss before Sunday's action.

Well, now the Owls have two losses, and only its third by 12 or more points in the past three seasons. The other two games were against Oklahoma State and North Carolina, major conference schools.

Marshall is a team fighting for a spot in the C-USA Tournament in Frisco, Texas, next month. It is going to take grit and guts for the Thundering Herd to get there, but it had those characteristics in spades Sunday afternoon. After a 23-4 fourth quarter – including an 18-0 run to end the game to flip the script against a team that won the last two regular season C-USA titles – Marshall players and staff gathered near the top of the key on one end of the floor and celebrated. The party spilled over in the locker room, and head coach Tony Kemper let the moment happen.

Kemper knows. He's witnessed every positive test, every practice short on numbers, every player struggling with the stops and starts; the quarantines; the months and months away from family, friends and fun. In January, Kemper talked about every "haymaker after haymaker" his program had endured. To be honest, few programs in any sports have been able to avoid those, but there's little solace in that.

"That's a really good win," Kemper said Sunday. "I don't know where … it probably stacks up there with … I mean, they were receiving votes in the Top 25.

"I'm not sure where it ranks," he continued. "They haven't lost very much in our league for the last three years. I know it feels good for our team that they came into Huntington and it didn't go the way they thought it was going to go."

Rice had won 13 of 14 games this season and had a lead as large as 11 points before the Herd rallied Sunday afternoon. Four road games remain for Marshall, and there's no guarantees the team can get to Frisco. North Texas, the Herd's next opponent, trails Rice by one game in the West. Middle Tennessee, at 10-2 in the East, awaits on the final weekend of the regular season.

"They certainly should have learned what they're capable of competitively when that buzzer went off tonight," Kemper said of his team. "It remains to be seen if we learned it or not. I'll tell you after the next four games, which are really tough games, too."

Then Kemper was asked about where this win ranks for him. Sunday was his 105th game as the head coach at Marshall, and he saw many, many more before those. All things considered, after the past year and the trials and tribulations, he knew exactly where to slot this victory.

"It's probably the best win we've had," he said. "There's quite a few of them I'm proud of, but that's a really good basketball team that played hard. You have to stare down that situation and you have to find a way to make more plays than them. Our team responded. We responded. The best team coming in here, backs against the wall, find a way.

"And they did."

That's been the story of the past 12 months, and why our friends at the Southeastern Conference do not get to keep the #ItJustMeansMore hashtag for themselves.

Nowadays, moments like we saw Sunday in the Henderson Center, it just means more for everybody.

Chuck McGill is the Assistant Athletic Director for Fan/Donor Engagement and Communications at Marshall University and a nine-time winner of the National Sports Media Association West Virginia Sportswriter of the Year award. In addition to HerdZone.com's Word on the Herd, McGill is the editor of Thundering Herd Illustrated, Marshall's official athletics publication. Follow him on Twitter (@chuckmcgill) and Instagram (wordontheherd).