Box Score (Springfield, Ill.) – The Missouri S&T Lady Miners had one of its best shooting performances of the young season as it opened Great Lakes Valley Conference play with a 76-57 win at Illinois-Springfield on Thursday evening.

The Lady Miners (3-1, 1-0 GLVC) led from start to finish in the contest winning their fifth straight conference opener in the process. S&T shot the ball extremely well in the opening frame as it connected on over 50 percent of its attempts (15-of-29) and were 4-for-7 from behind the arc.

The Lady Miners built a 21-11 advantage nearly nine minutes into the contest on a three by Katelyn Heil before the Prairie Stars (2-3, 0-1 GLVC) cut into the lead behind eight straight points by Paulina Pogorzelski.  S&T quickly answered with a run of its own to extend the lead back to 10 points at 33-23 with less than five minutes to play.

The Lady Miners would eventually build its largest lead of the half at 40-27 on Andrea Downs second three of the half with 1:29 remaining. Illinois-Springfield was able to stay in the game thanks to the shooting of Pogorzelski and Erin Glogovsky who scored the last four points of the frame giving S&T a 40-31 lead at the break.

Downs led S&T with eight points while Courtney Kemp, Hailee Parks and D'Naya Mims had six each. Pogorzelski led all scorers with 16 while Glogovsky had nine.

The Prairie Stars scored four of the first six points of the second half to cut the Lady Miner lead to seven points, but S&T countered with seven straight points pushing its lead back to double digits and would hold it there for the balance of the game.

UIS made one more run cutting the Lady Miner lead to 55-47 with 9:20 left but S&T quickly put the game away with a 14-1 run over the next five minutes building a 20 point lead in the process led by Kemp and Chelsea Stangel with nine points in that game breaking run.

The Prairie Stars got no closer than 16 points the rest of the way as the Lady Miner defense clamped down on the UIS offense holding it to just 34.8 percent shooting (8-for-23) in the second half.

S&T's offense was cooled slightly in the second half as it connected on 15-of-33 (45.5 percent). Four different Lady Miners finished the contest in double figure scoring led by Downs and Kemp with 14 apiece. Stangel had 11 and Mims finished with 10 points and seven rebounds. All 10 players scored for S&T in the contest.

Pogorzelski finished with a game-high 20 points, only four in the second half, Glogovsky had 14 and Susan Coryell finished with 10.

The Lady Miners return to action on Saturday afternoon with another GLVC contest at Quincy University beginning at 1 p.m.