Marion, IN — For the past several years, the Mid-Central Conference women’s basketball championship has gone through Indiana Wesleyan University.

Tuesday night at Luckey Gymnasium, the Goshen College women’s basketball team could not make it two pushes in a row.

A year removed from defeating Wesleyan for the 2003-2004 MCC Tournament Championship, the Goshen College women’s basketball lost 54-72 to the Wildcats on Tuesday night, concluding its 2004-2005 season in the first round of the conference tournament. Goshen (11-21, 3-13) struggled through a season bitten with inconsistency and frustration, and as a result was the MCC’s eighth seeded squad for post-season play. And while the Leafs did give a tremendous effort against the nation’s third-ranked team Tuesday night in Marion, the Wildcats’ 10-0 record at home would not be blemished, sending Goshen home for the year.

“The score is not very indicative of how well we competed tonight,” said Steve Wiktorowski, Goshen head coach. “We made them work very hard for the win. If we had played more often like we did tonight, we could have had a good season ourselves.”

Wesleyan — which ran the table during regular-season league competition with a 16-0 mark — got off to a quick 5-0 lead Tuesday night, but it wouldn’t last long. Goshen rattled off eight of the game’s next 10 points to grab an 8-7 lead at the 15:41 mark, and Wiktorowski’s team was showing some signs of making it a very competitive contest.

The Wildcats were able to respond, however, putting together a 16 to three run over the game’s next four minutes to make the score 23-11, Wesleyan. The host team would push its lead to 19 points with just under nine minutes to play in the first half, but the Leafs wouldn’t go away: A 13 to five run cut Wesleyan’s lead to just 37-26 with 1:29 remaining in the period, but the Wildcats answered again by scoring the final five points of the half. Goshen trailed 39-26 at the break.

“We didn’t have any long offensive lapses, but we just couldn’t keep up with their three-point shooting,” Wiktorowski said. “That and their big rebounding advantage were the big differences in the game.”

Indiana Wesleyan buried seven of 12 three-point attempts in the first half (58.3 percent) and had a 16 to 10 advantage in rebounding as well. Still, Goshen continued to fight. Behind senior Candice Williams’ 26 points — just one off her career high — the Leafs would not go away quietly. A Williams’ bucket at the 13:07 mark cut Indiana Wesleyan’s lead to just 49-38. When freshman Kelsy McKee buried one of her three three-pointers at the 7:59 mark, Goshen trailed by only a 55-46 count.

Unfortunately, that’s as close as the team would get. Indiana Wesleyan had an answer for each Goshen spurt down the stretch, as the Leafs would close the gap to 11 points on four more occasions, but never get closer. Wiktorowski took his senior group of Williams, Erin McDugle and Kortney Hanson off the floor for one final ovation with just under two minutes to play. The remarkable careers of that trio had reached its conclusion.

“I was extremely proud of the effort and leadership of our seniors tonight,” Wiktorowski said. “Candice was an offensive force who wouldn’t be denied inside. Kortney did a nice job running the team and Erin played with a lot of heart. Even though it was the end of a frustrating season, there were a lot of positives in the way we finished the year with this effort.”

After Williams’ 26 points on eight of 17 shooting, Goshen was led by McKee’s nine points on a three for six effort from the three-point line. McDugle chipped in six points and grabbed a team-leading five rebounds, while Hanson dished out four assists in her last game in a Goshen uniform.

On the evening, the Leafs’ offensive production was solid (18 of 42 from the field, 42.9 percent) but Wesleyan’s was better (25 of 47 overall, 53.2 percent). Add to this a 10 to four Wildcat advantage in offensive rebounds and an 11 for 18 shooting performance from behind the arc (61.1 percent), and Wesleyan was just too much.

The success of seniors Williams, McDugle and Hanson is well charted, as the trio left an indelible mark on the program. In addition to leading the program to its first-ever NAIA National Championships Tournament berth via MCC regular-season and tournament championships as juniors, McDugle exits as the school’s all-time leading scorer with 1,776 career points and is second in the career rebounding books with 727 boards. Williams scored 966 points in just two seasons at Goshen, while Hanson dished out 328 assists for her career, the fourth-most in school history.

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