ROLLA, Mo. – The Missouri S&T Lady Miners head to Springfield, Mo., for its season finale against the eighth ranked Drury Lady Panthers on Thursday beginning at 5:30 p.m. at the O'Reilly Family Events Center. S&T looks to snap an 11-game road losing streak while the Lady Panthers can clinch the top spot in the GLVC Tournament with a win.
The Lady Miners look to break a four game losing streak and a four game losing streak to Drury on Thursday evening. S&T dropped its fourth in a row with a 72-59 defeat against William Jewell this past Saturday. The Cardinals shot 40 percent (14-for-35) from the field and hit 8 of their 15 attempts from beyond the arc in the opening half. The Lady Miners got as close as 10 points in the second half but were unable to get any closer as WJC salted away the game at the foul line.
Joe'l Bland (St. Charles, Mo./Homeschooled) led S&T with a career-high 22 points on 7-of-9 shooting from the floor and at the foul line while
Leigh-Ann Kesper (Edwardsville, Ill./Edwardsville) added 12 points.
Janie Arand (Washington, Mo./St. Francis Borgia), the team's leading scorer with 8.8 points per contest, finished the game with eight points.
Kesper moved into second place on the school's single season block list with her three blocks against William Jewell last Saturday. She passed Leah Kessenich, who had 51 blocked shots in the 2001-02 season, and trails only Heather Hartman who had 69 in the 1994-95 season. Kesper leads the Great Lakes Valley Conference with 2.16 blocked shots per game and is ranked 24
th in all of Division II.
Drury enters Thursday's contest with a 10-game winning streak and has won 18 of its last 19. The Lady Panthers are 22-3 overall and 16-1 in GLVC after picking up wins over William Jewell and Rockhurst last weekend. Drury is currently ranked third in the NCAA Midwest Regional Rankings behind Michigan Tech and Lewis.
Annie Armstrong leads a trio of Lady Panthers in double figures in the scoring column with 13.8 points per game. Sanayika Shields is averaging 12.6 points per contest and leads the team in rebounding with 8.7 per game while Addy Roller is scoring nearly 11 points per game and has distributed a team best 87 assists.
Drury is second in the GLVC in scoring averaging 77.1 points per contest and lead the league in free throw shooting making nearly 81 percent of its attempts.
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