Sports

Summer Hemphill:

Postseason Honors, All-time Leading Rebounder, & Final game at UB

All-Mac Honors

March 8, 2022 – The Mid-American Conference announced their postseason awards earlier this month. Summer Hemphill garnered Second Team and All-Defensive Team recognition. Hemphill is UB’s third straight All-Defensive Team honoree.

Hemphill earned Second Team honors for the second time in her career. After missing most of the last two years with an injury, Hemphill made the most of her final season in Buffalo averaging a double-double with 13.9 points and 10.2 rebounds per game in addition to 2.1 assists per game while shooting 47.5% from the floor. She also lead the team with 38 blocks. She recorded 13 double-doubles on the year and now has 37 for her career. The Buffalo, NY native scored her 1,000th career point and grabbed her 1,000th career rebound earlier this season, becoming just the second player in program history to accomplish that feat. (These were her numbers at the time of this March 8th article from ubbulls.com)

Summer Hemphill pictured to the far right
2022 MAC Champions – UB Bulls Women’s Basketball Team

All-time leading Rebounder

March 11, 2022 – With her seventh rebound of the night in UB women’s basketball game against Akron in the semifinal round, Summer Hemphill became Buffalo’s all-time leading rebounder!! She surpassed UB Hall of Famer Kourtney Brown.

UB Bulls women’s basketball made first network TV appearance in NCAA tournament

The University at Buffalo women’s basketball team made its first network TV appearance in the NCAA tournament on 7 ABC Saturday, March 19th.
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The Bulls defeated Ball State 79-75 to win the MAC Championship earning the #13 seed in the Wichita region of the NCAA Tournament and headed to Knoxville to take on the host, Tennessee, who was announced as the #4 seed.

The Bulls took on Tennessee in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. This was the first network TV appearance in program history.

Dreams came to an end for UB Saturday afternoon as No. 13 seed women’s basketball (25-9) fell to No. 4 seed Tennessee (24-8), 80-67, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville, TN.

The size discrepancy between the two teams proved to be the deciding factor, as the Lady Vols outrebounded the Bulls by 17 and scored 19 second-chance points.

The Bulls put up a valiant effort against a superior Tennessee squad that had a considerable size advantage. Eleven of Tennessee’s 14 players are six feet or taller while seven of UB’s fifteen players are over the six-foot mark. UB had the game within two points at halftime, but the longer the game went on, the gap between the Bulls and the Lady Vols began to grow.

“Such a wonderful game to be on ABC, we weren’t going to relent and neither was Tennessee,” UB head coach Felisha Legette-Jack said after the game. “The fight was tremendous, all the way to the last seven, eight minutes of the game. At the end of the day, that size really wore us down a little bit.”

Graduate forward Summer Hemphill, who stands just over six feet, played a game-high 40 minutes. The Buffalo native played tenacious defense and battled against players that were anywhere from two to six inches taller than her. She grabbed 10 rebounds in what became her final game at UB.

“[I] can’t say enough about Summer Hemphill, who as small as she is, contested every possession,” Legette-Jack said. “She probably shouldn’t have played because her knee was bothering her, but there was nothing I could do to keep that young lady out of the game. And for that, I’ve got to thank her.”

The Bulls had the game within grasp until buckets by Burrell and Key provided Tennessee with a 10-point cushion at the eight-minute mark. The Lady Vols never looked back and held off UB to advance to the tournament’s second round.

“I’ll tell you what, I’ve been pretty stressed over this opponent,” Tennessee head coach Kellie Harper said. “Buffalo was really good. Our players knew it. They did not overlook them. They understood this was a very good basketball team.”

Regardless of the result, UB was able to gain national notoriety on network television. Saturday’s game was aired nationally on ABC, making it the first time in program history the Bulls have ever appeared on network TV.

UB played on the road against one of the premier programs of women’s college basketball and managed to give Tennessee a legitimate challenge.

Legette-Jack says the effort displayed by a Bulls squad that had everything working against them is a representation of what the program has become.

“We never lose, we either win or we learn,” Legette-Jack said. “And we won today because these young people showed a lot of heart, a lot of fight, and their story was told in a matter of 40 minutes. It was great to sit there and witness it.”

You make your Nation proud, Summer!

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