Bland leads NCA&T to MEAC title, Big Dance

March 15, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — Tournament MVP Amber Bland, a Boardman High graduate, scored 16 of her 18 points during the decisive first half and North Carolina A&T claimed its first NCAA tournament berth since 1994 by beating Hampton 76-54 on Saturday in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference championship game.

“Today was a championship game, but it meant a lot more than just a championship game to us,” Bland said.

The senior guard was 6-of-7 shooting in the first half. She had 10 points — including consecutive 3-pointers from the right wing roughly 30 seconds and 3 feet apart — during the 15-2 burst late in the half that put the Aggies in command.

Brittanie Taylor-James, the league’s player of the year, shook off a rough start and finished with 17 points for the top-seeded Aggies (26-6), who shot 40 percent and forced the Pirates into 24 turnovers.

Now, after breaking the year-old school record for victories and claiming their eighth straight win, it’s on to the NCAAs for the second time in school history and first since losing 111-37 to Tennessee 15 years ago. A MEAC school hasn’t won an NCAA tournament game since 1983.

“In order to win? A lot of luck and a lot of prayers,” coach Patricia Cage-Bibbs said.

Sharella Leslie scored 18 points to lead Hampton, which entered as the sixth seed but won three games in four days to reach its first title game in five years.

“If you asked the question on Monday, ’Was Hampton going to be in the championship game?”’ Pirates coach Walter Mebane said. “I don’t know many people — outside of our locker room, and the man above — who gave us a chance.”

The Pirates (16-16) were denied their first MEAC title since 2004, when they were coached by Cage-Bibbs — who now has won conference titles at three schools. She led Grambling State to six Southwestern Athletic Conference championships before coming to Hampton in 1999 and winning the MEAC three times.

“A lot of times, when you win this type of a game, it doesn’t really hit you,” Cage-Bibbs said. “Even though I’ve been here several times, I wanted it so much for these young ladies.”

That’s because she was seconds away from her first league title with A&T a year ago, only to see Coppin State win a championship-game stunner with a twisting layup in the final seconds.

This time, facing a Hampton team that previously took the Aggies to overtime and fired up after watching a DVD before the game that included some lowlights from that stinging defeat, they weren’t about to let another one come down to the wire.

Ashlee Finley added 12 points for Hampton, which never came closer than 14 in the second half and fell to 3-2 in MEAC championship games. The Pirates went 61‚Ñ2 minutes between field goals early and had as many turnovers (12) as points with roughly 4 minutes before the break.