St. Peter, Minn. – The Gustavus Adolphus women’s basketball team outlasted St. Kate’s at Gus Young Court on Saturday afternoon, to earn their first conference victory of the season. After battling back and forth all afternoon, the Gusties regained the lead with 6:06 left in the second half, and held on to defeat the Wildcats 61-50. With the win, Gustavus improves to 5-2 overall and 1-1 in the MIAC, while St. Kate’s drops to 5-2 overall and 1-1 in the MIAC.
“Overall, I give St. Kate’s a lot of credit—they were the harder working team today,” said Head Coach Laurie Kelly. “Today’s game was a great opportunity for us, not only to earn the win, but also to do some self-reflection and to make the changes we need to make in order to improve.”
The Wildcats grabbed an early lead, which they held for most of the first half, until the Gusties forced a turnover to take the lead with 4:40 left in the first half. Gustavus then went on a 5-0 scoring run over the remaining minutes, and headed into the lockers with a 32-27 advantage at halftime.
St. Kate’s came off the break ready to fight for the lead, and used a turnover to go up 33-32 over the Gusties with 18:11 left in the second half. The Wildcats held onto the lead, leading by as much as 6 points at the 12:14 mark, until a layup by Miranda Rice (Fy., Forest Lake, Minn.) tied the game with 9:35 left to play.
The Wildcats continued to battle, and regained the lead with 8:03 left to play, but a free throw by Lindsey Johnson (Jr. Edina, Minn.) at the 6:06 mark tied the game. From there, the Gusties ran away with the lead and never looked back, cruising to a 61-50 victory.
“Throughout the entire game I don’t think we gave the effort that we needed to give, but down the stretch—in the last five minutes I think we finally stepped it up and took care of business,” Kelly said. “We did a good job of clock management and controlling the tempo of the game today. I thought the biggest change in the game was when we started playing zone—we were able to really slow them down and we did a good job of forcing turnovers and making free throws down the stretch.”
Gustavus outrebounded St. Kate’s 42-31. Leading the Gusties in rebounds were Hannah Howard (So., St. Paul, Minn.) with 8 boards, and Johnson with 7 boards.
“Rebounds were a huge focus for us going into today’s game and we won the battle on the glass today,” Kelly said.
The Gusties shot 44.4 percent (20-45) from the field, 20 percent (3-15) from three-point range and 75 percent (18-24) at the line.
The Wildcats shot 29.6 percent (16-54) from the field, 25 percent (4-16) from three-point range and 63.6 percent (14-22) at the line.
LaShay Holt led all scorers with 21 points, and recorded a double double with 15 boards.
Mikayla Miller (Fy., Goodhue, Minn.) led Gustavus in scoring with 19 points, after shooting 8-for-10 from the charity stripe. Rice also scored in double figures, with 12 points after going 5-for-6 from the field and 2-for-2 at the line.
“With the game against Hamline a week away, we are going to focus on ourselves and our play this week to make some improvements and get ready to hopefully close out conference play in 2014 with another win,” Kelly concluded.
The Gusties will be back on the hardwood when they take on Hamline University on Saturday, Dec. 13 at 1:00 p.m. on Gus Young Court.