By: Luke Rinne, Assistant Sports Information Director
Box Score Louisville, Ky. – The Missouri S&T Lady Miners valiant effort in trying to rally from a 22 point halftime deficit came up a little bit short in its
87-80 loss at Bellarmine on Saturday afternoon in Louisville, Ky.
The Knights (13-5, 5-4 GLVC) came out of the gates strong knocking down 6-of-10 from the floor and connected on four threes to take an early 18-4 lead just four minutes into the contest. The Lady Miners (8-9, 2-7 GLVC) began to creep back into the game getting six straight points to cut the lead to 18-10 but Bellarmine quickly pushed the lead back to 16 behind six points from Allison Hughes.
S&T once again began to cut into the lead getting seven points off the bench from Lydia Karlefors (Sunderbyn, Sweden/Lulea Basketgymnasium) and Julie Meyer and actually got within 28-21 at the 8:45 mark on jumper by Kylee Grant (Peoria, Ill./Richwoods).
Defensively the Lady Miners couldn't contain the Knight offense as they went to the foul line 15 times and connected on 13 of those attempts and were 8-of-18 from behind the arc as they went into the break with a 51-29 advantage behind back-to-back threes from Dana Beavens including one right at the buzzer.
Hughes and Dana Beaven combined to shoot 9-of-14 from the field and made five three's to score 27 points in the opening frame. The rest of Bellarmine's offense was only 6-for-21 in the frame.
The Knights got the opening bucket of the second half to build their largest advantage. The two sides began trading points as Bellarmine held a 20 point advantage for the first 10 minutes of the frame.
S&T began to cut into the lead getting three straight three's off the bench from Karlefors (a pair) and
Courtney Kemp (Fredricktown, Mo./Fredricktown) to start the run. After back-to-back jumpers by
Sheena Chadwell (Mason, Mich./Mason) and McCaskill cut the lead to 63-50 with 11:03 to go BU's Allison Matheis hit yet another three to push the lead back to 16 points.
The Lady Miners continued to scrap and got to back within 12 before Matheis buried another three to extend the lead again. The Knights would extend the advantage to 73-56 before S&T went on a 14-3 to cut the deficit to only six with just under four minutes to play.
After a pair of free throws by Beaven pushed the advantage back to eight McElrath buried her second three of the afternoon to get within 78-73 and had a chance to get closer but Brittany Percival (Hartville, Mo./Hartville )'s three pointer was long and then after getting the rebound they turned it over. Bellarmine made the Lady Miners pay with yet another three to extend the lead back to eight.
S&T continued to battle and eventually got the lead down to three with 0:21 left on a three-pointer by Bell but just like Thursday night against Northern Kentucky, the Knights hit their free throws down the stretch to hold on for the victory.
McElrath scored 15 points in the second half to finish with a team-high 23 to lead the Lady Miners. Karlefors finished the game shooting 7-of-9 from the floor and hit all three of her three point attempts to finish with 19 points and McCaskill had 16 while Bell had 11.
Hughes finished with a game-high 24 while Beaven had 21, Brady finished with 14 and Kopple had 10.
S&T returns home on Thursday evening to face Kentucky Wesleyan beginning at 5:30 p.m.
