marshall, minn. - there's no better way for a team to pick its spirits up than to put up 100 points from 53.5% shooting and get back in the wins column, and that's precisely what the golden bear women's basketball team did on saturday night. #20 concordia reached the century mark for the first time in exactly 14 months in their 100-78 win over southwest minnesota state (11-5, 5-4 nsic). The win puts the season record at 14-2 overall and an nsic leading 8-1 conference mark. The last time concordia put up at least 100 points was on nov. 16, 2007. box score
if friday night's devastating loss was still in the minds of concordia athletes, it certainly only served as motivation to ensure a win in tonight's matchup. The golden bears led by a sizeable margin for the majority of the game, pouncing on a deflated mustang bench and putting up quick points. With a 29-point, 44-15 lead midway through the first half, the golden bear women were on pace to score 120 points, which would have been a new school record. Cu was not quite able to keep up that pace of scoring, but they still blew smsu away in poignant fashion.
center gillian bjerke (sr., detroit lakes, minn.) ran the court impressively throughout the game, especially in a 15-point first half. Bjerke and her cu cohorts put up 36 points in the paint in the first half and were extremely successful in turning smsu turnovers into buckets, scoring 13 points from 7 turnovers. The golden bears shot 56.8% from the field in the period.
the mustang offense countered with a 45.5% shooting performance in the second half and did a better job evening out the scoring, but the deficit built up early on was far too much to overcome.
zoraa quoie (g, jr., woodbury, minn.) finished off a season best performance of 23 points by nailing the final jumper that gave cu a 100-point game just in the knick of time, with 37 seconds left on the clock. Quoie's outlandish game saw 8-of-10 field goal shooting, 4-of-5 shots hit from three-point range and 3-of-3 free throws, not to mention three assists.
but there were far more stars to feature in the nsic win. With the team shooting figures hovering around season best marks, the golden bears never let off of the gas. They put in 56 points from in the paint and had five players put up 10 or more points.
bjerke finished with 20 points and seven boards, followed by guards maurika hickman (jr., minneapolis, minn.), jamie jones (sr., mounds view, minn.) and chanica hall (sr., minneapolis, minn.) with 13, 11 and 10 points each. Hickman and hall each read the court well and finished with seven assists in the win. The golden bears snuck out a win on the boards as well with 41 to smsu's 39.
the mustang calvary was limited to just seven players in saturday's game, putting the scoring weight on every player who stepped on the floor. All eight of smsu's players had at least 7 points, while forward laura kramer took over the bulk of the work with a 19-point, 12-rebound double-double. The nation's leader for assists, megan stadler, had eight in the game.
concordia now puts their 1-1 weekend split behind them but continues road play next weekend. They are at northern state and the university of mary, playing 6:00 pm games in both locations.
