It seemed fitting that, on senior night, the ball found its way into Felicia Chester’s hands on the final basket of the game.With the Blue Demons trailing 69-68 to No. 7/7 Notre Dame and time winding down, Taylor Pikes found Chester down low. Chester put up a shot and it fell in with six seconds left, giving DePaul a 70-69. That would be the final score after Notre Dame’s Skylar Diggins could not get a shot off in the final seconds.
“Honestly, I’m not sure what happened,” Chester said of her winning basket after the game. “I think I might have fell on the floor and stood up and the ball was there. I honestly don’t really remember, but I was kind of in shock once it went in, and it felt good to win in those last moments.”
Chester did fall down as the ball was being passed around, but got up in time to get the pass from Pikes.
“We had a timeout left and I didn’t wanna call it, because if I called it, [Notre Dame Head Coach Muffet McGraw] does a great job of setting her defense up, so the players had to make plays,” DePaul Head Coach Doug Bruno said after the game. “Taylor I think was the person that made the play.While [Chester] got the bucket, in our program, the player that makes the play is the person that should get the credit, and Taylor really made a great play there.”
Chester led all scorers with 20 points on 8-14 shooting, and added six rebounds. Keisha Hampton added 17 points, three steals and two blocks.
The win snapped a two-game losing streak for the No. 12/11 Blue Demons-both on the road to highly -ranked Louisville and Marquette. Diggins had 18 points for the Irish, while Natalie Novosel had 17.
“This was a huge win for us,” Hampton said after the game. “Losing two straight games, it was two tough losses for us, but we refocused, got together and came out with a huge win.”
Hampton helped spark a nine-point comeback by DePaul in the final 6:57. The Blue Demons trailed 58-49 after a made free throw by Diggins. Then, DePaul went on a 12-0 run over the next three minutes. Hampton knocked down two free to kick off the run, stole the ball from Diggins on the next possession, ran down for a fast break layup to make it 58-53, then came up with a huge block on Notre Dame’s Peters Devereaux. Chester also had four points during the run.
“Hampton and Chester were too much for us defensively,” McGraw said after the game. “We did a really poor job on those two, and that was disappointing.”
Offensively, Notre Dame found a lot of success in side. They scored 38 points in the paint, including a number of easy layups in the second half. DePaul, on the other hand, struggled most of the night. They shot only 2-11 in the first eight minutes of the period, before heating up towards the end.
“We were running in a state of temporary chaos,” Bruno said of the team’s struggles. “I was really proud of our players, after we were able to settle things down, for them to make the plays on both the defensive end and the offensive end, to finish a game against a great team.”
For Chester, it was an especially good way to end her final regular season.
“It’s definitely one of my top moments,” she said. “It’s Notre Dame, it’s senior night, they’re a top-10 team. It was an amazing win I’ll never forget.”
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The team travels to Connecticut this weekend for the Big East tournament, where they are the No. 2 seed.