ROLLA, Mo. – Missouri S&T's women's basketball team returns to Gibson Arena this week for a two-game homestand against the Great Lakes Valley Conference's Kansas City area schools as Rockhurst and William Jewell will pay visits to Rolla.

S&T will take on Rockhurst to open the homestand Thursday at 5:30 p.m., then plays host to William Jewell in a Saturday matinee game that will begin at 1 p.m.  The Miners come into the week seeking their first win in GLVC play after losing games last week at Southwest Baptist and Drury.

The Miners led for a good portion of the game last Thursday at SBU before the Bearcats outscored the Miners 27-14 in the fourth quarter in an eventual 81-74 win, then Drury dropped S&T to 3-14 overall with a win on Saturday in Springfield.

Katelynne Roberts (Edwardsville, IL/Edwardsville) led S&T with 24 points in the loss to Southwest Baptist and shared the team's scoring lead with Norah Gum (Waterloo, IL/Waterloo) Saturday with 12, as she enters Thursday's game still ranked among the GLVC leaders in four categories that she leads the Miners in.  Roberts has averages of 17.4 points, 8.4 rebounds and 1.2 blocked shots per game while shooting 56.2 percent from the field.

Coming into Thursday, Roberts ranks second in field goal percentage, third in scoring, fourth in rebounding and sixth in blocks in the GLVC. She is the team's lone double figure scorer, with Eryn Puett (Columbia, MO/Rock Bridge) averaging 9.4 points per game and owning a 37.5 percent mark from three-point range and Franchesca Metz (Downers Grove, IL/Nazareth Academy) and Bonnie Lew Ludlow (Indianapolis, IN/Covenant Christian) scoring 7.5 points apiece.

Addyson Kent (North Vernon, IN/Jennings County) is also averaging 7.2 points per game with 36 three-point baskets; her average of 2.1 per game is good for sixth in the conference.  Kent also leads the Miners with 41 assists and 25 steals.

ABOUT ROCKHURST: The Hawks enter play Thursday at 9-4 overall and 6-3 in the GLVC and are coming off a win over conference leader Lewis, as they took the lead for good on a Keegan Sullivan three-point basket with 3:15 to play and held off the Flyers down the stretch to win for the seventh time in their last eight outings. 

Rockhurst has been winning despite the fact that it is shooting just 34.8 percent as a team and 28.8 percent from three-point range, but is making nearly seven three-pointers per game and has forced its opponents into an average of 22.5 turnovers per game, the highest figure in the GLVC.  Individually, Sullivan leads the way with averages of 12.7 points and 7.4 rebounds per game and is shooting 50 percent from three-point range, while Macie Conway is averaging 11.8 per game with a team-leading 20 three-point baskets.

ABOUT WILLIAM JEWELL: The Cardinals, under the direction of first-year head coach Kyley Bachand, head into their game Thursday at Maryville at 4-11 overall and 2-7 in the GLVC.  Jewell has dropped its last three outings and fell 91-71 Saturday to Indianapolis despite getting 23 points from Emree Zars.

Zars is one of two double figure scorers for the Cardinals with an average of 14.9 points per game, trailing only the 16 points per outing from Ayden Shannon that ranks ninth in the conference; Shannon also leads the team in assists with 31.  Jewell has been heavily dependent upon the three-point shot – it has five players with at least a dozen treys on the year, led by the 26 recorded by Chloe Frank.