top seed and host concordia university (21-9) used double-doubles from junior captains katie laviolette and amanda behnke in an impressive 85-77 victory over the no. 2 seed, msu moorhead (21-9) on sunday afternoon in the nsic red baron women's basketball classic championship at the gangelhoff center.

the tournament title is concordia's second in school history, the other coming in the 2004-05 season when they defeated msu moorhead in moorhead, minn. Concordia, who earlier this season won their second regular season championship, made a clean sweep of the northern sun titles in 2006-07 and earned the nsic's automatic qualifier to the ncaa north central regional tournament at a site to be announced later this evening.

concordia will be making their fifth consecutive appearance in the regional and with their win yesterday over wayne state, they secured their sixth-straight 20-plus winning season. They have now won 19 of their past 21 games.

laviolette scored a career-high 21 points on 6-13 shooting from the field and 8-9 shooting at the line. She also dished out 13 assists for the third consecutive game, totaling 39 for the three tournament games. Laviolette was named the most valuable player of the classic.

behnke, the league's player of the year in the regular season, matched laviolette's point total of 21 on 5-17 shooting while getting to the free throw line 17 times, hitting 11. She also had 10 rebounds and two assists. Behnke played 36 minutes while laviolette never left the floor, seeing all 40 minutes in the game.

the bears and dragons jostled for position early, with concordia holding a slight 14-13 lead with 12:14 to play. But the bears would open up a 26-19 lead when junior megan kirchenwitz buried her second three in a two minute span to put concordia up seven with 9:29 to play.

the dragons would cut the lead back to two, 29-27 at the 6:36 mark following a katie walden three-pointer but the bears closed out the half with the last nine points in the final three and a half minutes to take a commanding 47-31 lead at the break.

msu moorhead fought back, trimming the lead to eight at 52-44 in the first three and a half minutes. The bears pushed the lead back to 11 at 55-44 after a pair of free throws by laviolette.

after going back and forth for the next few possessions, the dragons used an 11-4 spurt to cut the gap to just three, 65-62 with 11:24 to play in the game.

but that was as close as msum would come as the bears countered with a pair of behnke free throws on the next possession.

concordia was able to hold off msum despite a 46-26 deficit in the paint, partially due to the strong three-point shooting by the bears. Concordia hit 47.4% (9-19) from downtown while msum was just 25.0% (3-12).

both teams were at the line often, with concordia converting 22-32 (68.8%) and msum hitting 18-28 (64.3%).

the dragons also dominated the glass, outrebounding the bears 52-32 leading to a 15-6 advantage in second chance scoring.

concordia had just five turnovers, two more than their season-best of three, also against msu moorhead at the gangelhoff center earlier this season.

joining behnke and laviolette on the all-tournament team was teammate candace olstad. The sophomore forward poured in 15 points along with seven rebounds. She finished 6-10 from the field and 3-4 from behind the arc.

the team was rounded out with a pair of dragons, junior forward allison swenson and sophomore center meghan rettke. Swenson finished with 15 points and nine rebounds while rettke had 15 points and 10 rebounds in just 19 minutes off the bench before fouling out.

the golden bears will await the ncaa men's and women's basketball selection show to find out their seed and opponent. The show will air live at www.ncaasports.com/dii at 9:30 p.m. Beginning with the men's pairings immediately followed by the women's selections.

box score

2007 nsic red baron women's basketball classic
all-tournament team
candace olstad, concordia-st. Paul
meghan rettke, msu moorhead
amanda behnke, concordia-st. Paul
allison swenson, msu moorhead
most valuable player: katie laviolette, concordia-st. Paul