Box Score

Jefferson City, Mo. - The Southwest Baptist University women's basketball team came up just short at Lincoln on Saturday afternoon, falling to the Blue Tigers 70-61. With the loss, SBU drops to 7-10 (3-7 MIAA) on the season.

The Bearcats and the Blue Tigers exchanged leads to open up the MIAA match, with SBU scoring the first bucket of the game off of a jumper from Alexis Edwards, and help a three point lead (10-7) with 15:41 left in the first half. Over the next five minutes of play Lincoln used a 14-3 run to take a 21-13 lead, and pushed their lead to game high 14 (34-20) before SBU cut the deficit down to 11 before heading into the half down 38-27.

SBU opened the second half with seven straight points, cutting the Blue Tigers lead down to four at 38-34 with 16:05 remaining. However Lincoln responded by increasing their lead back to nine (45-36), but the Bearcats once again battled back. A layup from Alex Botkin and a three from Ashlee Pitts cut the deficit back to four again, but Lincoln used a run of their own to push their lead back to double-digits (53-42) with 6:32 left. The Bearcats continued to hang in and fight, and a Dilonna Johnson three with 1:22 to go cut the LU lead to four once again. The Blue Tigers pushed their lead back to eight (61-53), but Johnson hit three straight free throws, and a Leann Terrill three cut the deficit down to three (62-59) with only 42 seconds left in the contest. However, LU hit free throws in the final minute of the contest as SBU would eventually fall 70-61.

Leann Terrill led the way for SBU with 16 points and 5 rebounds while Dilonna Johnson added 13 points and Ashlee Pitts chipped in 11 points. As a team SBU shot 36.1% from the field, 32.0% from beyond the arc, and 81.8% from the free throw line.

The Bearcats will return home on Thursday, January 29 when they host Missouri Southern. Tip-off is set for 5:30 p.m. from the Meyer Sports Center in Bolivar.