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Mustangs Post Another 20-Win Season
Gass Is First-Team All-American
Kloewer And Reynolds Are All-America Scholar-Athletes
Mustang Season Ends In 2nd Round Of National Tournament
Mustangs Win National Tourney Opener
Gass Receives First-Team All-GPAC Honors
Gass Named GPAC Player Of The Week
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Dani Gass |
J.J. Hall |
Dani Gass, a 5-10 sophomore guard from Sioux City, received the Most Valuable Player Award when the Morningside College women’s basketball team held its awards banquet.
Gass, the Mustangs’ leading scorer and rebounder this past season with averages of 14.6 points and 7.4 rebounds per game, also received the Mustangs’ Offensive MVP Award, while J.J. Hall, a 5-9 freshman guard from Exeter, Neb., received the team’s Defensive MVP Award.
Aside from leading the team in scoring and rebounding, Gass was also the Mustangs’ leader with 152 assists and 89 steals for norms of 4.6 assists and 2.7 steals per game and made a team-high 134 free throws 186 attempts for 72.0 percent.
Hall averaged 9.8 points and 1.9 rebounds per game to rank second on the team in scoring. Hall made a team-high 60 3-point field goals in 160 attempts for 37.5 percent and was the Mustangs’ best free throw shooter with 45 gift shots in 59 attempts for 76.3 percent. She ranked second on the team with 71 steals for an average of 2.2 per game.
Brittany Williamson, a 6-0 freshman forward from Ruthven, Iowa, received the Most Improved Player Award and Alisha Willey, a 6-0 junior forward from Onawa, Iowa, received the Sixth Man Award. Williamson averaged 5.7 points and 2.6 rebounds per game, while Willey averaged 9.3 points and 2.9 rebounds per game and led the Mustangs in field goal accuracy with 106 hoops in 199 attempts for 53.3 percent.
Morningside posted a 21-12 record during the 2006-07 season en route to its fifth consecutive appearance in the NAIA Division II National Tournament. The Mustangs posted a 14-4 record in Great Plains Athletic Conference (GPAC) competition to share the regular season league title with Northwestern College, Hastings College, and Mount Marty College.
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Dani Gass |
Morningside’s women’s basketball team enjoyed another banner season during the 2006-07 campaign when the Mustangs posted a 21-12 record en route to a fifth consecutive appearance in the NAIA Division II National Tournament. The Mustangs finished with a 14-4 record in the Great Plains Athletic Conference (GPAC) for a share of the league’s regular season championship.
The 21 victories gave the Mustangs a school-record fourth consecutive 20-win season following records of 34-4 in 2003-04, 35-3 in 2004-05, and 28-7 in 2005-06.
The Mustangs’ runaway statistical leader was Dani Gass, a 5-10 sophomore guard from Sioux City who led the Mustangs in scoring and rebounding with averages of 14.6 points and 7.4 rebounds per game. She was the Mustangs’ leading rebounder in 28 of their 33 contests and had the team’s top single-game rebounding performances of the season with 14-board hauls in contests against Dana College and Dordt College. Gass moved into 22nd place on Morningside’s all-time career scoring list with 875 points and into 17th place on the college’s all-time rebounding list with 493 career rebounds.
Aside from leading the Mustangs in scoring and rebounding, Gass also topped the Mustangs with 152 assists and 89 steals for averages of 4.6 assists and 2.7 steals per contest.
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J.J. Hall |
Alisha Willey |
J.J. Hall, a 5-9 freshman guard from Exeter, Neb., made a team-high 60 3-point field goals, including a single-game high seven treys when she scored 33 points in the Mustangs’ 93-55 victory against Nebraska Wesleyan University on Dec. 2 for the Mustangs’ top single-game scoring performance of the season. Hall was the Mustangs’ second leading scorer with an average of 9.8 points per game.
Alisha Willey, a 6-0 junior forward from Onawa, Iowa, led the Mustangs in shooting accuracy from the field and from the free-throw line. Willey, who averaged 9.3 points per game, made 106 of 199 field goal attempts for 53.3 percent and 77 of 99 free throw attempts for 77.8 percent. Willey also led the Mustangs with 16 blocked shots.
 Dani Gass, a 5-10 sophomore guard from Sioux City, has been named to the first-team of the 2007 NAIA Division II Women’s Basketball All-America Team released on March 13.
Gass becomes the Mustangs’ third first-team All-American in the last four years, joining Brittany Carper and Megan Cloud, who were first-team All-Americans in 2004 and 2005, respectively.
Gass was the Mustangs’ leading scorer and rebounder this season with averages of 14.6 points and 7.4 rebounds per game as well as the team leader with 152 assists and 89 steals for norms of 4.6 assists and 2.7 steals per game. Gass was the only player to rank among the top five individuals in the Great Plains Athletic Conference (GPAC) in scoring, rebounding, assists, and steals. Gass finished second in the GPAC with an average of 5.0 assists per game in conference play, was third in steals with an average of 2.7 per game, fourth in scoring at 15.1 ppg, and fifth in rebounding at 7.2 rpg.
She was the Mustangs’ leading rebounder in 28 of their 33 games, including 15 of their final 16 contests, and had 14-rebound performances against Dordt College and Dana College for the team’s top individual rebounding performances of the season. Gass finished the season with a streak of 20 consecutive double figure scoring performances, including a career-high 27 points when the Mustangs bowed out of the NAIA Division II National Tournament with a 95-79 loss against Cedarville University in the second round.
Gass made 163 of 348 field goal attempts for 46.8 percent and 134 of 186 free throw attempts for 72.0 percent.
Gass is the 20th leading scorer and 16th leading rebounder in Morningside history with 918 career points and 509 career rebounds, respectively. She has averaged 13.5 points and 7.5 rebounds per game during her Morningside career.
Morningside posted a 21-12 record this season and made its fifth consecutive appearance in the NAIA Division II National Tournament. The Mustangs had a 14-4 record in the GPAC to share the league’s regular season title with Hastings College, Mount Marty College, and Northwestern College.
Click here for the complete 2007 NAIA Division II Women's Basketball All-America Team.
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Paula Kloewer |
Betsy Reynolds |
Morningside College’s Paula Kloewer and Betsy Reynolds were each named 2007 Daktronics-NAIA Women’s Basketball All-America Scholar-Athletes.
Kloewer, a 5-9 senior guard from Defiance, Iowa, has a 3.57 cumulative grade point average (GPA) and is majoring in elementary education and special education.
She is a four-year letterwinner for the Mustangs.
Reynolds, a 5-9 senior guard from Sioux City, has a 3.75 cumulative GPA and is majoring in elementary education.
Reynolds, a four-year letterwinner, was averaging 4.6 points per game and led the Mustangs in 3-point field goal accuracy with 26 treys in 61 attempts for 41.0 percent before she suffered a season’s ending ankle injury in the Mustangs’ 22nd game of the season.
Daktronics-NAIA Women’s Basketball All-America Scholar-Athletes must be of at least junior status and have a cumulative GPA of 3.50 or higher.
Click here for the complete list of Daktronics-NAIA Women's Basketball All-America Scholar-Athletes.
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Dani Gass scored a game and career-high 27 points. |
Cedarville University gained some revenge for some past miseries inflicted by the Mustangs when the fifth-ranked Yellow Jackets defeated No. 12 Morningside 95-79 in the second round of the NAIA Division II National Tournament on Friday night in Sioux City’s Tyson Events Center/Gateway Arena.
The Yellow Jackets, who were defeated by Morningside in the 2004 and 2005 NAIA Division II National Championship Games, will take a 26-6 record into Saturday’s quarterfinals, where it will meet No. 22 Taylor University in a 6 p.m. contest.
Morningside, which bowed out with a 21-12 record, can look forward to the future with a young team that finished the campaign with three freshmen, three sophomores, and three juniors in its regular rotation.
Cedarville connected on 54.2 percent of its field goal attempts while posting the highest scoring total against the Mustangs all season.
Cedarville’s Brittany Smart, the national scoring leader as well as the NAIA Division II’s all-time leading career scorer, reached another milestone during the contest. She finished with 25 points and became the all-time leading scorer in NAIA Division II National Tournament play with 346 career points.
Smart just missed a triple-double. She grabbed a game-high 12 rebounds to lead the Yellow Jackets to a 39-34 advantage on the boards and dealt a game-high nine assists.
Karah Walton also had a big night for the Yellow Jackets. She scored 13 of their first 23 points, including eight of their first 10 tallies, to finish with 21 points. Kristi Beougher was next with 19 points.
Dani Gass paced the Mustangs with a career-high 27 points and was joined in double figures by Autumn Bartel with 16 and Brittany Williamson with 11.
Aside from her career scoring high, Gass also grabbed seven rebounds to lead the Mustangs on the boards for the 28th time in their 33 games this season, and also dealt a team-high six assists.
Cold shooting in the first half did in the Mustangs, who misfired on 11 of their first 12 floor shots to help Cedarville open an early 18-6 lead out of the gates.
Kristi Tighe made a pair of 3-pointers to pull the Mustangs within four points, 20-16, with 9:58 left in the half.
Cedarville built its lead back to 12 points, 30-18, on a basket by Beougher with 6:23 left. Morningside stormed back behind some deadly 3-point shooting from Tighe, Bartel, and J.J. Hall and trimmed the deficit to two points, 37-35, on a 3-pointer by Hall with 2:31 left in the half. But Cedarville closed out the half with an 11-3 scoring run to take a 48-38 lead into the intermission.
Cedarville reeled off seven unanswered points to start the second half to open an insurmountable 55-38 advantage. The Yellow Jackets pushed their lead over the 20-point mark when Alison Lemon struck from 3-point range with 13:04 left in the game to make it 65-44.
The Mustangs battled back to close within eight points, 72-64, on a three-point play by Kayla Miller with 6:42 left, but could get no closer.
Click here for complete game statistics.
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Dani Gass |
Autumn Bartel |
Morningside advanced past the first round of the NAIA Division II Women’s Basketball National Tournament with a 79-69 victory against 18th-ranked Davenport University on Wednesday night in Sioux City’s Tyson Events Center.
The 12th ranked Mustangs will take a 21-11 record into a second round contest against No. 5 Cedarville University, the team Morningside defeated in the 2004 and 2005 National Championship Games. Cedarville, which blasted Union College 86-63 earlier in the day, will take a 25-6 record into the contest.
Morningside advanced despite making just 11 of 25 free throw attempts for 44.0 percent. The Mustangs also had to withstand a furious second half scoring flurry by the Lady Panthers’ Jeanette Woodberry, who scored 24 of her game-high 30 points after the intermission. She made 10 of 15 floor shots in the second half. Woodberry entered the game with a scoring average of 20.6 points per game, was this season’s Wolverine-Hoosier Athletics Conference (WHAC) Player and Newcomer of the Year after she joined the team as a transfer from NCAA Division II Wright State University, where she had started for the past two seasons.
Autumn Bartel and Dani Gass shared Morningside scoring honors with 16 points each, followed by Alisha Willey with 15 and Brittany Williamson with 14.
Lynne Blomberg and Sara Haverdink also scored in double figures for Davenport with 20 and 10 points, respectively.
The Mustangs entered the national tournament with six losses in their last 10 games, but snapped out of their late season funk with an impressive opening half. The Mustangs went on a 22-6 run over the first eight minutes and opened their first double figure lead when a 3-pointer by Bartel put them in front 14-4 less than four minutes into the game.
The Mustangs eventually built their opening half lead to a whopping 19 points when Dani Gass scored with 4:15 left in the half to make it 39-20. Davenport went on a 13-3 run to close within 42-33 before Bartel made another 3-pointer right before the horn to send the Mustangs into the intermission with a 45-33 advantage.
The Mustangs shot 52.8 percent from the field and pressured the Lady Panthers into 14 turnovers during the first half. Bartel led the Mustangs with 11 points behind a three-for-four shooting display from beyond the 3-point arc, while Willey and Gass were right behind with nine points each.
The Mustangs shut down Woodberry, who had more turnovers (seven) than points (six), in the first half. But Woodbury took off to start the second half when she scored 13 points in less than four minutes to pull Davenport within 53-46 with 16:21 left in the game.
Woodbury stole the ball and drove in for a layup to make it a 56-50 game with 14:20 left.
Morningside went on a 10-0 run, much of it while Woodberry was on the bench, to open the lead back up to 66-50 before Woodberry ended it with a 3-pointer to make it 66-53.
The Lady Panthers eventually closed within four points, 68-64, when Haverdink made a 3-pointer with five minutes left before the Mustangs went on an 11-5 scoring run to close out the game.
Blomberg grabbed a game-high 11 rebounds to lead the Lady Panthers to a 42-39 advantage on the boards. Gass pulled down nine rebounds to lead the Mustangs in rebounding for the 27th time in 32 games this season.
Gass added game-high totals of six assists and four steals.
Click here for complete game statistics.
Gass Named To All-GPAC First-Team; Hall Is Co-Freshman Of The Year
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Dani Gass |
J.J. Hall |
Dani Gass, a 5-10 sophomore guard from Sioux City, is one of four repeat selections from a year ago named to the first-team of the 2007 All-Great Plains Athletics Conference (GPAC) Women’s Basketball team as selected by the league’s head coaches.
In addition to Gass, the Mustangs’ J.J. Hall, a 5-9 freshman guard from Exeter, Neb., was named the GPAC’s Co-Freshman of the Year and was named to the All-GPAC second-team. Hall shared the league’s top freshman award with Michelle Amundson of Mount Marty College. Gass and Hall have helped lead the Mustangs to a 20-11 record and a berth in next week’s NAIA Division II National Tournament.
Gass is the Mustangs’ leading scorer and rebounder this season with averages of 14.1 points and 7.4 rebounds per game as well as the team leader with 140 assists and 82 steals for norms of 4.5 assists and 2.6 steals per game. Conference statistics show that Gass was the most complete player in the GPAC this season as the league’s only player to rank among the top five individuals in scoring, rebounding, assists, and steals. Gass finished second in the GPAC with an average of 5.0 assists per game in conference play, was third in steals with an average of 2.7 per game, fourth in scoring at 15.1 ppg, and fifth in rebounding at 7.2 rpg.
She has been the Mustangs’ leading rebounder in 26 of their 31 games, including 13 of their last 14 contests, and had 14-rebound performances against Dordt College and Dana College for the team’s top individual rebounding performances of the season. Gass has scored in double figures in each of the Mustangs’ last 18 games.
Gass has made 148 of 320 field goal attempts for 46.3 percent and 123 of 166 free throw attempts for 74.1 percent.
Gass is the 22nd leading scorer and 17th leading rebounder in Morningside history with 875 career points and 493 career rebounds, respectively. She has averaged 13.3 points and 7.5 rebounds per game during her Morningside career.
Hall is the Mustangs’ second leading scorer with an average of 10.1 points per game and has the team’s top individual scoring performance of the season with 33 points in a 93-55 victory against Nebraska Wesleyan University on Dec. 2. Hall also ranks second on the team with 67 steals for an average of 2.2 per game to go along with 30 assists and an average of 2.0 rebounds per game.
Hall has made a team-high 58 3-point field goals in 147 attempts for 39.5 percent and has made at least one 3-pointer in 28 of the Mustangs’ 31 contests. She has made 105 of 226 field goal attempts for 46.5 percent and 44 of 57 free throw attempts for 77.2 percent.
In addition to their two elite-team selections, the Mustangs’ Autumn Bartel, Leslie Foral, and Alisha Willey were all named to the All-GPAC honorable mention list.
Bartel, a 5-9 sophomore guard from Cherokee, Iowa, is averaging 8.3 points per game and is the Mustangs’ second leading rebounder with an average of 3.7 caroms per game. Bartel, the 35th leading scorer in Morningside history with 648 career points, was a second-team All-GPAC selection last year.
Foral, a 5-11 freshman guard from Chadron, Neb., is averaging 4.8 points and 2.9 rebounds per game and has started 15 of the Mustangs’ 31 contests. She leads the team in free throw accuracy with 40 free throws in 50 attempts for 80.0 percent.
Willey, a 6-0 junior forward from Onawa, Iowa, is averaging 9.4 points and 2.9 rebounds per game and leads the team with 16 blocked shots and in field goal accuracy with 99 hoops in 180 attempts for 55.0 percent.
Morningside posted a 14-4 record in the GPAC to share the league’s regular season title with Hastings College, Mount Marty College, and Northwestern College.
Click here for the complete All-GPAC team.
 Dani Gass, a 5-10 sophomore guard from Sioux City, Iowa, has been named the Hauff Mid-America Sports/Great Plains Athletic Conference (GPAC) Women’s Basketball Player of the Week for the week of Jan. 1-7.
Gass led the Mustangs to a pair of lopsided victories against nationally ranked NAIA Division II opponents. She dealt a career-high 12 assists to finish one shy of a school record to go along with 16 points, four rebounds, and four steals in an 88-63 win against No. 4 Northwestern College. Gass had 11 points, a career-high eight steals, six rebounds, and four assists in a 77-54 triumph against No. 20 Doane College.
For the week she averaged 13.5 points, 5.0 rebounds, 8.0 assists, and 6.0 steals per game. She made 10 of 17 field goal attempts for 58.8 percent.
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