saint paul, minn. - the golden bears (3-5, 2-2 nsic) won their second consecutive nsic conference game on sunday afternoon as they shut down southwest minnesota state (2-6, 1-3 nsic) in a 68-52 win. The golden bears forced 24 turnovers and held the mustangs to 30.2% shooting in the win.
maurika hickman led all scorers with 25 points in the win, it was the fifth time this season she has been the leading scorer and third time this season she has 20+ points.
box score
hickman's 25 points was two points shy of tying her career high which she set earlier this year against michigan tech. She was nearly perfect on the night as she was 8-9 from the field, 3-4 from three point range and 6-6 from the line.
jineen williams scored 12 points which was second on the team.
zoraa quoie came up one steal shy of a double-double with 10 points and nine steals, a career high. Freshman
jodi batzel led the bench scoring with eight points and added seven rebounds.
ari johnson led all cu players with eight rebounds.
smsu got on the board first as abby kenealy hit a three pointer but the golden bears immediately went on a 10-0 run, keyed by quoie who had five points and a steal. All ten points came as a result of mustangs turnovers. The golden bears extended their lead to as much as 16 with just under six minutes left in the first half. Once cu took the lead at 5-3 thanks to a quoie jumper, they never gave up the lead. Concordia ended the half with a 16 point lead, 37-21.
the golden bears scored 18 first half points off 15 mustangs turnovers. Hickman was a perfect 5-5 in the first half including 3-3 from the line. Cu was 6-12 from three point land in the first half. Quoie had another great first half defensively as she had six steals. In the past two games she has a combined 13 steals in the first halves of play (17 total steals for the weekend). Williams had 11 points in the first half, batzel had five of her seven rebounds in the first half including three on the offensive glass.
southwest minnesota state stepped up the defensive effort in the second half as they cut the cu lead to nine at 47-38 with 10:26 remaining. The key to the comeback was smsu was able to hold cu scoreless for the first 4:32 in the second half. Cu only scored four points in the first 11:21 in the second half as smsu used a 19-5 run to claw back in the game. With the score at 47-40 with 8:53 left, concordia went on a 17-2 run to bring their lead back up to 19 with 1:57 left down the stretch.
hickman had 12 points in the second half on 3-4 shooting and 6-6 from the line. Cu only scored 28 points in the second half with almost 50% of the scoring coming from hickman. Smsu had 13 second chance points in the second half as they climbed back in the game over the first ten minutes of the half on the offensive glass.
the golden bears will be back in action on saturday, december 18th for the last game of 2010 against st. Cloud state at 6:00 p.m. Cu returns to the gangelhoff center on friday, january 7th for a game with winona state.
photos by tim evans, smsu athletic communications
