Tampa Captures Share of SSC Regular Season Title

BOCA RATON, Fla. - For the first time in six years, The University of Tampa women's basketball team has captured a share of the Sunshine State Conference regular season championship. Behind an impressive 64-44 victory over Lynn (16-11, 7-9 SSC), the Spartans (22-5, 12-4 SSC) secured its place alongside Rollins atop the final SSC standings.

The conference championship is the program's third with its last coming in the 2002-03 season, Tom Jessee's first at the helm. The Spartans also won the regular season title in 1993.

Gianna Messina has carried the Spartans recently and the talented sophomore continued her impressive play on Saturday. For the first since November of 2007, a Spartan recorded 30 points in a game as Messina finished the game with 30 points and 12 rebounds. The Tampa native has recorded 20 or more points in five of the last six contests.

Lynn started the game off quickly, putting the Spartans down 7-0 less than two minutes into the contest. However, the Spartans would begin to answer when Messina hit her first of six threes in the contest at the 16:47 mark to give Tampa its first points. Catriana Messina gave the Spartans a 9-7 lead with 13:39 left in the half before Lynn quickly nailed a three to regain the advantage.

The Spartans would score the next 16 points to take a 25-10 lead before the Fighting Knights would make another basket with 3:41 to play in the first stanza, a scoring drought over nearly ten minutes. The teams traded baskets in the half's closing minutes as the Spartans took a 33-19 lead into the locker room at the break.

Tampa controlled the second half of the contest as the hosts could get no closer than 15 at any point as the Spartans won its ninth straight game.

Tiara Cook also had a strong day for the Spartans as she recorded her second-straight double-double and her fifth of the season. The junior finished the contest with 16 points, 10 rebounds and a team-high five blocks.

UT will now host Lynn in the quarterfinals of the 2009 Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida SSC Tournament on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Martinez Center. A victory would send the Spartans to the semifinals on Sat., Mar. 7 at Fort Lauderdale. The championship game is slated for Sun., Mar. 8 with the final two rounds being played at Nova Southeastern University.

The Spartans will be seeking its third conference tournament championship in the past four years.

The complete seeding for the tournament will be announced by the conference on Sunday.

A live webcast and live stats will be available for Wednesday's conference tournament opener through www.tampaspartans.com. Fans may also sign up for eScores, a free service that sends text message alerts to fans at the conclusion of Spartan athletic events. Please visit the official athletics website to sign up.

Tom Jesse Postgame Quotes

(on establishing a successful program since taking over in 2002)

When I was hired at Tampa and given this opportunity, I told the administration, and I told the players and I told the community that we wanted to build a program, not a team. A program meaning that it would be consistent and give us a chance to compete for conference championships and things just like the other sports there at Tampa have - volleyball, baseball, soccer - all the good teams that compete every year. We wanted to align ourselves up in that situation.

I feel like we weren't sure with the class that just graduated because our success had just been within one class mostly. We kind of rode them out for a three-year period after their freshmen year and had some success. So I wasn't really sure going into the year exactly - you know, all these graduations of seniors - what would transpire from it. I felt like we had good talent, just thought it would take us a while to get going, but I think the sign of the program being built was the returning people who even though they played limited minutes and played backup roles in the past couple of years, they were ready to become starters, and they've been - along with the addition of the transfers and the freshmen class - have solidified the fact that we think we've got a program headed in the right direction.

(on the upcoming SSC tournament)

We'd like to win that title. We felt like we let one slip away from us a year ago on our home court. We felt like we had a chance on our home court to possibly win that third one in a row, but that didn't happen, but this group now will focus on Wednesday - one game at a time. When you get to the tournament, it's an old cliché, but it is a one-game playoff. There's no room for error. I think we've got enough returning people that have been in this position before that we can lean on. That experience is something you can't teach, it's only something you can gain. Our returning people have all been in this environment.

But it's the first time in this tournament's history that all eight teams can win this tournament. In the past that wouldn't be true - maybe one of the top three or four at the very most could win the tournament. But the eighth seeded team could very well end up winning this tournament, and there's never been that kind of balance and parity in the league.

So it'll be a - you know, we want to go in and win one game at a time. You just have to win and advance. It doesn't matter how it happens, you just have to win and advance.

(on Wednesday's quarterfinal game being against today's opponent)

Well, it's never good because you've got to turnaround too quick to play the same team that you just played. Maybe there are some advantages - some people think there are advantages to playing them because you just prepared for them, but that's never an easy thing. Now you've got a team who has beaten us on our home court, we beat them on their home court. So, they'll come to Tampa with confidence because they have beaten us at home. They were the only loss at home for us and I expect - they're a senior-laden ball club, they've got three starting seniors - I expect they'll be well prepared. I expect them to come in there swinging right from the get-go.

(on Tampa being motivated to avenge earlier home loss to Lynn)

This group of players tends to get very, very motivated under what we call a revenge factor. We'll twist it, turn it, try to spin it a little bit, but our kids are pretty focused right now.

(on this season)

We're just very proud of the regular season - to post that number (22 wins) and to be a part of a conference championship. This is the second time we've done it since we've been there. It's just hard to explain and put it all into words. I'm very proud of the group, and now we'll start what we call the third part of the schedule.

There's the non-conference schedule which I thought we found our identity in a little bit during that time. Then there's the conference schedule which we've now just finished and tied. We feel like we have some chemistry and are peaking at the right time. And then the third part of this equation is your tournament. Everybody starts over, and we'll turn the page and start at 0-0 and see if we can post some numbers.