Even though Missouri and Drake were tied at 76 points apiece, the Tigers’ final possession of overtime felt like the team’s last chance. Star seniors Sophie Cunningham and Cierra Porter had both fouled out of the NCAA tournament opening round contest after combining to score 39 of the team’s points, so another five-minute period figured to favor No. 10-seed Drake. Seventh-seeded Missouri had the ball with 15.9 seconds left in overtime, but its hopes seemed more and more remote as the seconds ticked away and the ball never made its way inside the three-point arc.
Eventually, the ball came to Jordan Roundtree, who had just a few seconds to heave a desperate three-pointer. At first glance, it looked like Roundtree’s 25-foot shot had been blocked by Drake’s Becca Hittner. But a nearby official blew his whistle and raised his fist in the air, signaling a foul on Hittner. Roundtree would go to the free throw line for three shots with 1.1 seconds left on the clock.
Roundtree missed the first, rattled in the second and missed the third.
Even though Hittner got a clean look at the final buzzer, the one free throw proved enough to extend Missouri’s season. The 77-76 victory advances the Tigers to the round of 32, where they will play Iowa on Sunday. A tipoff time has not yet been set.
Throughout the game, Porter said, she and Cunningham turned to one another and said “we’re not done tonight.” The two seniors embraced the fact that a loss would both end their season on the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament for the fourth season in a row and bring their college careers to a close. They carried the load for the Tigers in the second half, combining to score 26 of the team’s 34 points after halftime.
“Me and Sophie just kept saying to each other, no, we’re not done. We’re not done tonight,” Porter said after the game. “And so I think you kind of use that to give you, if you’re tired, extra oomph."
Yet in the final minute, all either player could do was watch, their fate resting in the hands of their teammates. Cunningham described the final few possessions as “very stressful,” but in the huddle before Missouri’s final possession, she remained upbeat, smiling as she yelled instructions and encouragement at her teammates. Despite the fact that, in Missouri’s last game, Cunningham scored 33 of the team’s 56 points, her confidence in her teammates never wavered.
“I honestly just said, like, you guys are built for this,” Cunningham said. “And they really are. A lot of us are in the spotlight on this team, but the people who were in at the end of the game, they don’t get that credit that they deserve. They work their tail off every single day in practice, and I just told them, like, you are built for this. Go out there and show people what you got.”
To reach overtime, Missouri needed every one of those points from its two seniors. Drake feasted on Missouri’s 19 turnovers, scoring 19 points off the giveaways, and seemed to answer every big Missouri bucket with a score of its own in a game that felt more like a Sweet 16 matchup than a first-rounder.
“No way you can convince me they’re a 10-seed,” head coach Robin Pingeton said of Drake after the game.
Missouri led by three points at halftime, but Drake sped up the tempo in the third quarter, got hot from three-point range, and at one point threatened to run away with the game. The Bulldogs led by six points with 1:55 left in the third quarter. Missouri clawed back to tie the game on the first possession of the fourth, setting the stage for a tense, back-and-forth final quarter.
That’s when Porter and Cunningham took over. Porter gave Missouri the lead when she scored and drew a foul with just more than seven minutes left in regulation. Drake took it right back with a Hittner layup, then Hittner hit a three to extend the lead to four points. Missouri answered with a three from freshman Haley Troup, and a few possessions later took the lead again when Cunningham drew a foul and made two free throws. Drake tied the game with a free throw on the following possession and recaptured a two-point lead when Brenni Rose scored with 2:37 to play.
Missouri came up empty on the following two possessions, at one point dodging a bullet when a Drake player missed an easy layup in transition. Finally, Cunningham drove and drew contact once again, then sank two free throws to tie the game with 41 seconds remaining. On its final possession, Drake went inside to Sara Rhine, who scored 18 points on the game. Porter made perhaps her biggest play of the game by stuffing Rhine’s shot, which forced overtime and elicited a yell from Cunningham.
“When she got that block, I knew we had it,” Cunningham said. “I really did.”
Despite Cunningham’s confidence, Drake wouldn’t roll over. The two teams traded three-pointers on the first few possessions of overtime, the last of which, from Porter, tied the game. It was just her third made three-pointer all season. Porter said she reached a point in the second half when she felt like she could score every time she touched the ball, and that confidence extended to her three-point attempt.
“I was feeling good throughout the game,” Porter said. “If you're going to leave me wide open, I'm going to be confident.”
Just seconds after making the three, however, Porter fouled out. Cunningham followed suit with 15 seconds remaining, when she fell for a pump fake from Maddy Dean and sent Dean to the free throw line, where Dean tied the game with 15 seconds remaining. That led to Missouri’s final possession.
With Cunningham and Porter on the bench, Pingeton said Missouri hoped to get the ball inside to forward Amber Smith, but Drake recognized that and denied a passing lane to Smith. If that was the case, Pingeton told her team, make sure not to force anything or shoot the ball too quickly so that Drake wouldn’t have an opportunity to win the game.
“We did not want to shoot too early, and I think that's why the development of the play was off a little bit because we were so concerned about making sure we had the last shot,” Pingeton explained.
As Roundtree stepped to the free throw line, the contingent of fans wearing Drake gear bombarding the officials with boos, she tried to tell herself not to treat these free throws any different than normal ones. Even after she saw the first one rim out, she remained poised.
“Just took a couple deep breaths and knew, hey, this is what I dream about,” Roundtree said. “You gotta want those moments. I thought all three of them were going in, but I’m just glad I got one to go.”
When Hittner’s last-second three-point attempt clanged off the rim, Missouri’s bench players charged onto the court and swarmed Roundtree.
“This is what March is all about, surviving and advancing,” senior Lauren Aldridge said. “We survived today.”
The Tigers will play two-seed Iowa, which survived an upset bid from 15-seed Mercer Friday, for a chance to advance to the program’s first Sweet 16 since 2001. Even though Missouri needed overtime to beat a double-digit seed Friday, players said they will enter Sunday’s matchup confident.
“We don’t get intimidated by anyone,” Porter said. “Respect everybody, but fear nobody is what we said. … Every two-seed is obviously a very elite-level team, but we just gotta go out there and do what we need to do, because I think when we come locked in and ready to go, we can play with anybody.”
