Northwestern University Athletics
The Morning After...Senior Day Through The Sunglasses
2/21/2011 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Feb. 21, 2011
NUsports.com Special Contributor Skip Myslenski recounts Sunday's victory over Minnesota on Senior Day, Kendall Hackney's National Anthem performance and Beth Marshall's sweet shades.
EVANSTON, Ill. -- Their game was tied at 48 and now, with just 7:42 remaining in it, the Cat Basketball Women were gathered around their coach Joe McKeown. His message to them was simple. "We," he said, "have to get five stops in a row."
"We have a drill we do where you have to get four stops in a row, sometimes we make it three or five," he later explained. "It's something that we practice. It gives them a goal, a focus."
"We knew it was the time," added his star, the center Amy Jaeschke. "If we were going to pull away or try and get the momentum, the eight-minute mark was the time to do it."
••••••
This was Sunday afternoon at Welsh-Ryan Arena, where the 'Cats were staring down Minnesota against a backdrop rife with emotion. For not only was it Senior Day and the final time Jaeschke and Meshia Reed would be gracing their home court. It was also a day that found Beth Marshall, their choreographer from the point and the fire in their soul, sidelined by an eye injury and watching from behind sunglasses.
She too is a senior and, to reach this moment in her career, had overcome both a pair of season-ending injuries and the death of her father. She burned, simply burned, to be part of this game, but 48 hours earlier had learned she had a corneal ulcer infection in her right eye. "It put me back to two years ago, not being able to play. It was terrible," she later said, and then she explained how it all came down.
"Friday morning," she said, "when I went to the first eye doctor, he said, 'I don't want to scare you, but this is serious enough that I can't, I'm not qualified to treat you.' So I was thinking, 'This isn't good.' But I still thought 24 hours of drops would do the deal because I'd never had an eye infection. So then I went to a cornea specialist and he looked at me and took maybe a minute and he was like, 'No contact and no basketball.' It broke my heart.
"I was like, 'Senior Day is on Sunday. I will wear Rec-Specs. I need to play.'
"He was like, 'You don't know how serious this is.'
"It's in the middle of my central field of vision, which makes it so serious. It's not necessarily what it is that makes it so bad. It's where it is. He told me, 'One hit to your eye could make this permanent loss of vision.'
"I was, 'Enough said.'
"I can't risk that. I knew today was going to be hard for other reasons. This just kind of piled it on. I had my cry. I cried. Then my mom said, 'Is this worse than anything else we've been through?' I said, 'No.' That was basically all she needed to say for me to snap out of it and say it's one game, I need to put the emotional feelings aside and be logical. And be confident there's a lot of games left for us too in the post-season. That was another good way of looking at it. But it was a good thing I had to wear these glasses because I definitely got a little teary-eyed out there."
••••••
Without their leader, and with their emotions at full boil, the 'Cats started slowly against the Gophers and, at the half, trailed by two. "We stood around a lot waiting for her (Marshall) to get us going," McKeown later said of these 20 minutes. "That's what she does. She's such a great leader on this team. The second half we did a much better job. It was just, 'All right. We're going to play basketball now.'"
They not only played. They attacked at full cry, sharply moving the ball against the Gophs' 2-3 zone, smartly entering the ball to Jaeschke on the blocks. Again, as always, she was the recipient of double-teams and triple-teams and back-alley muggings, but here both here her composure and her game remained unruffled. "The first time we played Minnesota at their place it was definitely a physical game, so I knew coming into today that it wasn't going to be easy and that it was going to be a wrestling match," she later said. "So I just tried to prepare myself mentally for that."
And just how do you prepare for a wrestling match?
She chuckled and then said, "Basically, not to let it get into your head. Sometimes it can get really frustrating. But if you just stay calm and don't let it get to you, you can still play a good game."
She would play a good game, finishing with 21, and abetting her here offensively was the sophomore forward Kendall Hackney, who ended with 20. "My focus," she would say, "was just be aggressive. The last couple games we've been kind of passive on offense. I'm like, 'Just take it to the hole and see what happens.' It worked out pretty well today."
"Sometimes," said McKeown, "Kendall gets what the great (former DeMatha High School coach) Morgan Wootten would call paralysis by analysis. She just over thinks the game. Most players, when they're playing well, just play. They're not clogged up with a lot of different things. Just trying to get her simplified, go play and relax, it's a big goal for us."
••••••
Hackney had opened this afternoon singing the National Anthem and so, later, we wondered what if singing or playing was her toughest task this day. "Definitely playing," she said with a smile. "Singing's easy. I could do that all day. Playing's a little more physical, but I enjoy both of them a lot."
Does she sing with a band?
"I sing for our worship team in Athletes In Action. I sing worship every week. And I may do some private voice lessons on campus."
"She also serenades us in the locker room a lot," Jaeschke now cut in with a mischievous grin. "So we get to hear here sing a lot."
"In the shower a couple times," said Hackney.
What kind of songs?
"You know. Just pop. Everything. Country. We whip it all out," said Hackney.
"Musicals," said Jaeschke.
"Oh, yeah. 'Glee' is my favorite, for sure," said Hackney.
Does she want to be on that popular TV show?
"That's a goal of mine, for sure," said Hackney.
"She would faint if someone called her up to put her on 'Glee,'" said Jaeschke.
"It'd be a dream come true. Yeah," said Hackney.
••••••
The dream this Senior Day was a victory for Jaeschke and Reed and Marshall, but as they broke from the time out at 7:42, the 'Cats were still deep in a steel cage match that was far from decided. But they had their orders, five straight stops, and here they bowed up and put a seven-minute stranglehold on the Gophers. 0-of-9 from the field, 3-of-6 from the line. Two turnovers. That is all the Gophs managed in those seven minutes and when their draught passed, when they finally managed a lay up with 24 seconds remaining, the 'Cats were up nine and set to make dreams come true. "I thought we contested shots better down the stretch, got through screens, didn't let them break out in transition," McKeown later said.
"We really wanted to get after it," said Jaeschke. "In our last home game against Iowa, we let their players take over that we knew were going to take over. So our focus tonight was to stop their players who were really going to get them going."
••••••
Not only were her parents at Welsh-Ryan on Sunday. There too, said Jaeschke, were "Cousins, aunts, uncles, basically my whole freshman floor dorm came out. It was nice to see familiar faces in the stands cheering for you."
And what were her emotions now that she has no home games scheduled?
"It's kind of surreal. I don't really feel like it's my last game. I don't think it's hit me yet. But it's a great way to go out, with a win. I'm proud of our team for digging in, especially without Beth here. Without our leader on the court, the fact that we could pull off this win, Senior Night, last home game, was pretty huge."
"It was a real emotional game, Senior Day, last home game of the year," McKeown was then saying. "You have three seniors who have been that committed to our program and helped completely change the culture of women's basketball. It was just a real emotional day for us, then, to compound it with Beth not being able to play, this kid has been through everything you could imagine, so it was just a real, real emotional day for us. I'm really proud of the team, the way we handled some adversity today and the way we stepped up in the second half."
••••••
She sees a doctor every day now and hopes to play when the 'Cats visit Penn State on Sunday. But even after the swelling in her eye recedes she will not be able to immediately wear contacts, which she does while playing. Beth Marshall explains this while sitting on a step outside her team locker room and now she is asked if she looked around Welsh-Ryan, if she soaked in its aura, at game's end. "I was so caught up in us winning, I really didn't think to look around," she says.
"But I did look at my mom and I did look at my brother and Brad (Phillips, her fiancé and the former 'Cat safety). I know, even though I didn't play, they're proud, and that means a lot to me. And in the huddle, I did thank my teammates. Every year, I've been the one to say, 'Let's win this for our seniors, they deserve it.' This year I said, 'We got Amy, Meshia and myself. Do this for us.' Especially just for Amy. She lives right here (in Wilmette), and Meisha's in state as well (Country Club Hills). I just thanked my teammates and said, 'That's great.'
"One of the most important messages I could give to them before the game was you have to have confidence you can win without me. That they did just says so much about our team."
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