Gophers women’s basketball escapes North Dakota State’s rally for 69-65 win in WNIT Super 16

Amaya Battle was talking about the Gophers women’s basketball team’s 69-65 victory over North Dakota State at Williams Arena Friday night in a WNIT Super 16 game when she turned to coach Dawn Plitzuweit.

“Yeah, Dawnie P, I remember,” she said.

Look confident, be confident. It’s Plitzuweit’s motto. For much of Friday’s game Battle’s shot wasn’t falling. As a 16-point Gophers lead late in the third quarter was turning into a three-point Bison lead with 2:18 left in the game, Battle struggled. She started the fourth quarter with a missed shot, a foul and two turnovers before being subbed out with 6½ minutes left.

Just over 2 minutes later, about to go back in the game, Plitzuweit said, “Are you ready to play with confidence?” she asked Battle. “We need you to play with confidence.”

OK.

With 73 seconds left Battle dribbled into the lane and hit a jumper. At the other end Mallory Heyer got her 12th rebound off a missed Bison shot. With 34 seconds left Battle did it again: into the lane, jumper, swish, one-point Gophers lead.

“I was trying to find my center,” Battle said. “I remember Dawnie P always preaches body language. If you show you’re confident, you’ll believe you’re confident.”

We’ll see if that carries over to Monday’s WNIT quarterfinal game at Wyoming.

And that brings us to Nia Holloway.

Friday she grabbed six rebounds, five on the offensive end. She had two steals, both in the fourth quarter, the second out of an NDSU time out following Battle’s second jumper. She stole the ball. Plitzuweit sometimes gets on Holloway for focusing too much on the player she’s defending rather than the ball. “I was watching the ball,” Holloway said. “She always says if you do that the ball will fall into your hands. And it happened.

Fouled, Holloway first thought, “Uh-oh.”

She entered the game 10-for-37 on free throws: 37%.

“Then everyone around me was like, ‘These are in,’” Holloway said. “Having them around me, to be confident in me, boosted my confidence.”

She made them both.

Battle and Holloway are in no way the only reasons why the Gophers (18-15) averted disaster Friday. Freshman Grace Grocholski scored 16 points with six rebounds. Ten of those points came in the third quarter, when the Gophers turned a four-point halftime lead into a 14-point lead entering the fourth. Heyer had 13 points and 12 boards, her sixth double-double of the season. Sophie Hart scored 10.

But Holloway, and particularly Battle, dragged the team back from the edge.

“I told her after the game I was really proud of her,” Plitzuweit said of Battle, who was 3-for-14 over the first 38-plus minutes of the game. “It is challenging to have a stretch where you don’t play well, and then you have to step up and make shots. To even want to take those shots. … Those were two really good shots.”

And the Gophers needed them against NDSU (22-12), which played much better than the team the Gophers beat by 22 points in November. The Bison shot 48.1% and got 18 points from Elle Evans, plus 12 from Miriley Simon. The Bison made eight of nine shots in a 23-4 run that began with Heaven Hamling’s jumper with 36 seconds left in the third quarter and ended with Hamling’s two free throws with 2:18 left in the game.

To top things off, Battle rebounded the Bison’s last three-point try, was fouled and made one of two free throws with 2 seconds left to ice the game.

“This just gives us confidence that we can go out and do great things,” Holloway said. “Not a lot of people believe in us, but we believe in us.’’