by Danny Kotula | Aug 18, 2021 | News Slider, Sports
Last season for the Lipscomb women’s soccer team, everything was in place for another ASUN conference championship–until it wasn’t. The top-seeded Bisons went into the conference tournament last April needing just three wins to qualify for the NCAA Tournament for the third straight year. Instead, they lost at the first time of asking to league-bottom Liberty and saw their season cut short. This year, though, longtime head coach Kevin O’Brien’s squad looks more primed than ever for an NCAA appearance. An already experienced team returns most of its key contributors from last year, and that alone makes the Bisons formidable once again in 2021. Couple that with an ASUN Preseason joint-top ranking and four players on the Preseason All-Conference list, and the expectations become sky-high for Lipscomb’s women’s soccer program. Luckily, there’s more than enough quality in the squad to live up to those expectations. Coach O’Brien’s Bisons bring back nearly all of last year’s starters, with the notable exceptions of long-serving goalkeeper Melissa Gray and starting defenders Audrey Ann Beck and Kaitlin Echols. Gray spent five years with the program and started for the past two seasons, but her successors are equally capable. Our prediction for who puts on the gloves is redshirt sophomore CJ Graham, but the Swannanoa, N.C. native has strong competition from redshirt freshman Sydney Jones of Castle Pines, Colo. In his ever-honest way, Coach O’Brien let on that even he was unsure of who would end up starting the season at goalkeeper. “I told them early on, ‘Hey, this is the one position in our team that there’s a bit of a question mark.’...
by Spencer Boehme | Apr 4, 2021 | News Slider, Sports
On Saturday night, Lipscomb’s four seniors were just two consecutive FGCU points away from never seeing the NCAA tournament in their college careers. In the fifth set, FGCU’s Erin Shomaker gave the Eagles a 14-13 lead to set up match point. All the Eagles had to do was collect the next point, and that would have been ballgame. But then three of the Bisons’ seniors aided in a 3-0 run that ultimately gave the Bisons the win Saturday evening. Senior hitter Megan Kuper tied the game on kill, and senior blocker Sami Rubal assisted with a block after that. And then it was senior defensive specialist Ashley Maher who set the ball up for junior hitter Garret Joiner, who rocketed it past FGCU libero Dana Axner near the back endline for the game-winner. The ASUN named Rubal the tournament MVP, and Dilfer and senior libero Alyssa Zwolensky received All-Tournament team honors. It will be the eighth NCAA tournament appearance in Lipscomb history, all of which have come under 18-year head coach Brandon Rosenthal. Lipscomb first advanced to the tourney in 2007. The Bisons have won the ASUN championship seven times (they received an at-large bid in 2014). ESPNU will air the selection show at 3 p.m. CT. The Division I volleyball tournament will be played in Omaha, Nebraska. Rubal and Kuper led the way with 14 and 13 kills for Lipscomb, while Joiner followed up with 12. Freshman Delaney Dilfer once again had an impeccable evening setting the ball, as she accounted for 50 assists after garnering 53 the night before. For FGCU, the sophomore hitter Shomaker wreaked havoc...
by Erika Plunkett | Feb 20, 2021 | News Slider, Sports, Uncategorized
After starting their 2020 season with the best 6-0 start in the program’s division one history, COVID-19 brought the promising season to an abrupt halt just 16 games in. Now one year later, after so much anticipation for a Friday season debut, winter weather has further extended the unusually long offseason. Despite the delays, Lipscomb has retained the majority of their roster as well as adding a few new key additions, and the hopes of an ASUN championship are just as high. “I feel like our team is better talent-wise, but so is every other team in the country,” said head coach Jeff Forehand. “Everybody is playing with five classes and a shortened Major League Baseball draft and shortened number of rounds, so there are a lot of players playing college baseball that should be playing professional baseball now. Also, the addition of some older transfer guys is obviously going to make our team better, but the same type of guys have transferred to other teams as well. So college baseball across the board is going to be so much better and so much more improved. For us and our team, we are excited of where we are right now and just looking forward to getting back out there as soon as this snow melts off.” For the Bisons, it all starts and ends with preseason ASUN player of the year senior infielder Haddon Adams. Adams is one of the three seniors who elected to take the extra year of eligibility granted by the NCAA, joining fellow senior infielders David Graves and Brian Jones. “It’s hard to answer with...
by Mckenzi Harris | Dec 11, 2020 | News Slider, Sports
The Bisons took on the Southeast Missouri Redhawks in their home opener Wednesday and pulled off an impressive 80-74 win in overtime, behind a career performance from sophomore guard Jake Wolfe. The first half went back and forth for the first 13 minutes until the Bisons got hot and finished the first half with a 32-22 advantage. Early in the second half, the Bisons had their biggest lead of the night, 40-25, over the Redhawks. The lead quickly began to slip away from the Bisons almost as quickly as they gained it. The Bisons found themselves down 9 with 6:11 left in the game, but Wolfe found himself on the line 6 times over the next minute and a half and hit every shot to give the Bisons a chance late. With 50 seconds left in regulation, Lipscomb was down four, and Wolfe hit a free throw and a layup making it a one-possession game. SEMO sophomore guard Jordan Love was then fouled with 11 seconds left where he made just 1-of-2, keeping the score within reach for the Bisons 63-60. Once again Wolfe proved to be the hero for the Bisons, as he hit a buzzer-beater three to force overtime. The unbelievable play even garnered national attention, making an appearance on ESPN’s Sportscenter Top 10. During the overtime, Lipscomb junior guard Greg Jones hit a three with 2:30 left, and the Bisons kicked up the defense, setting the tone for the final minutes of regulation with a final score of 80-74. Wolfe finished the night with a career-high 26 points, including 21 points in the second half and overtime....
by Erika Plunkett | Nov 5, 2020 | News Slider, Sports
Even though positive COVID-19 numbers on Lipscomb’s campus have risen in recent weeks, Lipscomb athletic director Philip Hutcheson remains positive about how Lipscomb athletics has managed the pandemic this fall. “I think the semester has gone really well considering where we are at,” said Hutcheson. “The NCAA made some decisions athletically in terms of how we were going to have to deal with this.” While much of Lipscomb athletics’ success with the COVID pandemic is due to the vigilance of the staff, coaches, and players, some pressing concerns were alleviated by some of the NCAA’s decisions. “We weren’t sure starting out if we were going to have fall sports or not, and then they [the NCAA] decided not to have fall sports,” said Hutcheson. “That took care of a lot of the questions we had about logistics and how to handle events and crowds and that sort of thing.” Fall sports may have been canceled, but practices and preparations for the spring continue, and so adjustments have had to be made to reduce the spread of the virus. “We’re still trying to deal with distancing, cleaning things a lot more often, or using different routing for how we come in and out of places,” said Hutcheson. “One of the things that’s different for athletes compared to the rest of the student body is we do a lot of testing of our athletes. Depending on the sport they play, they’re classified as either a high contact sport, medium contact, low contact. So basketball, for instance, is a high contact sport. They test more often. ” With these protocols, athletics has...
