Box Score (Springfield, Mo.) – The Missouri S&T Lady Miners had to withstand a furious rally by the Drury Panthers to hang on for a 66-63 win in the Great Lakes Valley Conference opener for both teams on Thursday evening at the O'Reilly Family Events center in Springfield, Mo. S&T (3-3, 1-0 GLVC) improved to 8-0 all-time in GLVC openers and won for just the third time in a conference road opener since joining the GLVC in 2005-06.

The Lady Miners got off to a slow start making just 3 of its first 15 shots and trailed the Lady Panthers (4-3, 0-1 GLVC) by an 8-2 margin five minutes into the contest. S&T slowly began to chip away at the lead and tied the game at 12 on a three from Toni Knar (Mundelein, Ill./Mundelein). Drury regained the lead after a pair of free throws by Bethanie Funderburk with 9:26 left in the half. Knar answered in a big way hitting back-to-back three's to put the Lady Miners up 18-14 and sparked an 18-0 run. S&T eventually led 30-14 and wouldn't be headed the rest of the way. Knar had 11 points in the run as S&T held the Panthers scoreless for 5:30. Katie Pritchard ended the run with a three and then Abby Bracker hit a jumper to cut the lead to 30-19.

The Lady Miners pushed the lead back out to 12 on a layup by Hailee Parks (Sullivan, Mo./Sullivan) with 1:14 left in the opening stanza. Funderburk hit a pair of free throws to make it a 10 point game at the half.

After its slow start S&T finished the half making 9 of its last 17 shots to shoot 37.5 percent in the opening half. The Lady Miners were 4-for-8 from three and 6-of-9 at the foul line. Knar led all scorers with 16 points while Parks had six.

Drury made four of its first eight shots, but was just 3-for-15 the rest of the half and finished with 30.4 shooting percentage (7-for-23). It was 2-of-5 from three and 8-for-8 at the foul line. Pritchard, Funderburk and Bracker had six points apiece.

S&T opened the second half strong scoring the first seven points of the half and took its largest lead of the game at 41-24 on a Katelyn Heil (Dexter, Mo./Dexter)
three two minutes into the frame. The Lady Panthers began to mount a charge started by Pritchard and would close to 43-32 with 14 minutes left. The Lady Miners extended their lead back out to 14 points on a layup by Kylie Cooper (Andover, Kan./Andover) nearly halfway through.

The lead would remain in double figures for the next four minutes as both teams started to go cold from the floor. Drury would cut the lead to 54-51 with seven straight points from Funderburk and Pritchard. S&T stretched its lead back out to six with three straight free throws from Parks and led 57-51 with 4:33 left in the game.

Funderburk answered on the other end to make it a four point game, but Cooper answered with another big jumper to push the lead back to six with 3:35 left. A free throw by Taylor Jensen (Farmington, Mo./Farmington) gave the Lady Miners a 60-53 lead with 2:11 to play, but Funderburk answered with a three to cut the lead to 60-56 with less than two minutes to play. S&T had plenty of opportunities to put the game away at the foul line but struggled to do so.

Kyesha Hall (Dodson, La./) hit 1-of-2 at the line to make it 61-56 at the 1:54 mark. After a two straight good possessions on the defensive end Cooper hit probably her biggest shot of the night to put the Lady Miners up 63-56 with 1:11 left in the game. S&T had two golden opportunities to make it an 11-point game, but both Jensen and Hall missed wide open layups in the final minute. Pritchard hit her fifth three of the contest with 0:23.5 left to make it a four point game.

Forced to foul the Lady Panthers chose to foul Parks and she hit both free throws to make it a six point game with 0:21 remaining. Funderburk made a driving layup with 8.9 seconds left to make it 65-61. Drury called a timeout and got a steal off the inbounds and Marla Munson hit a jumper in the short corner to make it 65-63 with less than five seconds to play. The Lady Panthers would use their final timeout to setup a steal off the inbounds. They couldn't and fouled Cooper with 3.6 remaining. She missed the first but made the second to make it 66-63.

Pritchard hustled the ball up court and let a 25-footer fly at the buzzer in front of the Drury bench, but it was long off the back iron and the Lady Miners were able to escape with the win.

S&T outrebounded the Lady Panthers 42-28 and outshot them by a 43.1-to-37.0 percent margin. The Lady Miners shot 53 percent in the second half (10-for-19), but were just 11-of-19 at the foul line. Drury shot 42 percent in the stanza (13-for-31), 4-of-9 from downtown and 9-for-11 at the foul line.

Knar and Cooper had 16 apiece to lead the Lady Miners. Cooper scored 13 of those in the second half. Parks also finished in double figures with 13 points. Parks and Cooper combined for 16 rebounds.

Pritchard led all scorers with 24 points, 18 in the second half while Funderburk dropped in 17.

S&T will be off until Wednesday, December 19, when it plays host to Lindenwood University beginning at 5:30 p.m., at the Bullman Multi-Purpose Building.