Picking up right where she left off in the final 1:01 last night in leading #5 concordia university (24-1, 15-1 nsic) to a victory, senior point guard katie laviolette (manitowoc, wis.) continued to put the ball in the net, scoring 25 points while just missing her first career triple-double with nine rebounds and nine assists. The result was a 70-54 win on the road at upper iowa university (6-22, 2-14 nsic) at dorman gymnasium in fayette, iowa.

the 25 points for laviolette was a new career-high. Despite shooting just 4-13 from the field, she was nearly perfect at the free throw line, making 17 in 18 attempts, setting a new school record for most free throws made in a single game. She also improved her season free throw percentage to 87.0%, converting 80-92 at the stripe.

she is now just 19 points shy of 1,000 for her career, scoring 34 on the weekend, giving her 981 in her four years for the golden bears.

laviolette's offense was accompanied by the continued late season surge of senior guard kelly lund (new brighton, minn.), who poured in 19 points for the third consecutive night and is now averaging 20.0 points per game over the last four and has scored 93 points in cu's current five game winning streak, raising her average to 9.6 ppg.

concordia continued to produce wins over the weekend despite their lowest two three-point shooting efforts of the season, making three last night before hitting just two this evening. Prior to that, concordia had been sinking 8.35 three-pointers per game (6th in ncaa division ii) and had a previous season low of four on four different occasions.

getting back to the 16 point victory over the peacocks, concordia led from coast to coast with no ties or lead changes, scoring the first five points of the game with laviolette making a jumper :22 into play and lund hitting a lay-up and converting the three-point play at the 18:12 mark.

leading 13-12 at the 11:37 mark, the golden bears sprinted out for a 17-1 run, holding the peacocks to just a single free throw for eight minutes and 55 seconds of action when paige devine finally stopped the peacock drought with a jumper in the lane.

upper iowa would manage four more points before the break as concordia cruised into halftime leading 35-19.

the golden bears held the peacocks to just 26.9% (7-26) shooting while uiu was 0-4 from three-point distance and 5-9 at the line. Laviolette was well on her way to the triple-double after the first 20 minutes of action with eight points, seven assists and six rebounds, shooting 6-6 at the line.

in the second half, upper iowa held the deficit in the middle teens until laviolette buried two more free throws to give concordia their largest lead at that point, 50-30 with 13:39 to play.

the pushed the lead back to 20 one more time minutes later at 54-34 before the peacocks came to life, going on a 13-2 run to cut the margin to single digits, 56-47 with six and a half minutes remaining.

trailing by nine, upper iowa had two offensive possessions, committing a turnover on the first before missing two three-pointers on the next possession and failing to capitilaze on the situation.

concordia went 6-7 from the foul line and 4-8 from the field down the stretch while holding the peacocks to 2-9 shooting during the same time frame to secure the win.

laviolette and lund were the only two players to reach double-figures on offense while candace olstad (jr., f, elgin, minn.) had seven points as did amanda behnke (sr., c, eagan, minn.).

upper iowa was led by christa hammel with an all-around effort of 12 points, eight rebounds and four assists to lead her team in all three categories while kim thompson added ten points.

concordia took care of the basketball, committing a season low eight turnovers while forcing 14. They had eight blocked shots on defense as well, leading to uiu shooting just 36.8% (21-57) from the floor including just two of 13 from behind the arc.

the back-to-back nsic champions look to continue their five game winning streak and 22 game home winning streak next weekend when they face southwest minnesota state and second place wayne state on friday and saturday evening at the gangelhoff center.

the golden bears are 44-4 since their 2-7 start last season and are 33-3 against the nsic in that same span. They also have a current 21 game home winning streak against nsic teams (including postseason games) that dates back to february 17, 2006 when they fell 85-61 to wayne state.

box score - cu 70, upper iowa 54