st. Paul, minn. - the golden bears (2-5, 1-2 nsic) got their first nsic conference win this season with a 79-64 victory over minnesota state university, mankato (3-4, 0-3 nsic) on friday night. Cu was lead by maurika hickman who scored 19 points on 5-7 shooting and converted on all six free throw attempts. Fellow senior zoraa quoie scored 13 and led the cu defense with eight steals. Concordia forced 20 turnovers in the game and scored 24 points off those turnovers. box score
cu got double digit scoring from five players, the three other who joined hickman and quoie were; rachel hansen, jineen williams and ari johnson. Hansen and williams each had 12 while johnson had 10 points.
the golden bears opened the game on an 8-2 run while converting on four free throws in the opening two-plus minutes. Cu held onto the six point lead until the next stoppage of play at 12:48 left in the first half. Going into the media timeout, cu still led by 6, 19-13 with 9:48 left. The golden bears then went on a 26-16 run to take a 45-29 lead into halftime.
hickman had 11 points in the first half on 3-4 shooting and 4-4 from the line. The golden bears forced 15 turnovers in the first half with most of the help coming from quoie who had seven steals in the first half alone, she added eight points as well.
a 6-0 run to start the half brought the mavericks to within ten but a quoie three pointer was able to calm the storm and return cu's lead to 13. Cu scored 10 of the next 12 to extend their lead to 60-39, their largest lead of the game. Cu kept their lead around 20 for a majority of the second half. With just over a minute left cu held a 79-58 lead and held on to win 79-64.
concordia made 18 of 21 free throws in the game, compared to msu who made just 7-13. Msu was able to control the boards, out-rebounding the golden bears 41-32 and 18-8 on the offensive glass but only converted their offensive rebounds to 17 second chance points. Freshman jodi batzel added seven points off the bench as cu's bench outscored the mavericks 17-12.
the golden bears will be back in action tomorrow afternoon as they take on southwest minnesota state at 4 p.m.
photos by trevor saylor
