The women’s basketball team and Stevens Institute of Technology were separated by just three points in the regular season — with Ithaca in the lead. However, the Stevens 59–57 victory Saturday came at the most important time: in the Empire 8 championship final.

The final game was no different than the previous two. Each featured a high level of play, and was decided by the athletes making clutch baskets in the last minute. In the first two games, junior guard Lindsay Brown made the big shots to give the Bombers the lead.

“It’s never a sure thing when you play a team as good as Stevens,” senior forward Tracy Bradley said. “The first couple games went our way, so eventually it goes the other team’s way.”

In the Stevens win, Ducks guard Dani Dudek scored a jumper in the lane with 30 seconds left to give them the lead they needed to finish the game with a win.

“We were very evenly matched,” sophomore Jordan Confessore said. “One play could have made a difference.”

This time, one player in particular made that difference. While many would expect that person to be Dudek, the Empire 8 Player of the Year, a new face burst on the scene. Stevens freshman guard Melissa Collier showed no lack of experience in her first Empire 8 tournament. She hurt the Bombers with 19 points and seven rebounds en route to being named tournament MVP.

“Dudek had been kind of going off all season long,” Bradley said. “But all of a sudden Collier had the game of her life.”

Her emergence proved to be too much for the Blue and Gold, who already had to shut down one scorer in Dudek. They even had to switch defensive stopper senior Megan Rumschik off of Dudek midgame to shut down Collier.

“When stopping one player isn’t enough to beat them, you know you are playing a good team,” Rumschik said. “It was a beating physically and mentally.”

That all-around talent was something the Bombers did not have to worry about in their first game of the tournament against St. John Fisher College, who they soundly defeated 73–59.

“Fisher only had one player who we needed to shut down to win,” Rumschik said. “Stevens has five great players on their team.”

Preparing for the two different teams though, did provide a challenge because of the different styles of play. Unlike Fisher, Stevens liked to slow the ball down and work out of the half-court

offense, which was used to get Collier and Dudek driving to the basket. The slower pace hurt Ithaca’s offense a little bit, as it was unable to consistently push the ball up the court in transition of both made and missed shots.

The Bombers finished their conference season in first place, which made the playoff loss even more upsetting. The athletes’ faces were filled with disappointment after the final half-court heave fell short.

“It’s hard to watch a team celebrate like that, especially when the game is so close,” Confessore said. “It was not how we thought it would turn out.”

The slight chance of having an at-large NCAA bid was diminished Monday morning when the Bombers were left out of the tournament field. The postseason will go on though, as Ithaca received a bid to the ECAC Upstate N.Y. Championship Tournament. The Bombers are the second seed in the tournament and will face the No. 3 seed SUNY-Potsdam in a semifinal game at SUNY-Cobleskill in Cobleskill, N.Y.

After a tough 68–66 loss in Potsdam  on Nov. 30, this game will have more edge than usual.

“If there’s one team in it that I wanted to play first, it was Potsdam,” sophomore forward Elissa Klie said. “We have a score to settle with them.”