fayette, iowa - the concordia women's basketball team is the sole victor of the northern sun intercollegiate conference regular season title for the fourth time in school history. They took the title outright with a 67-55 win over upper iowa university (2-25, 0-20 nsic) on saturday afternoon. The golden bears (23-4, 17-3 nsic) have earned a spot as the top seed in the 2010 nsic sanford health women's basketball tournament, whose quarterfinal round starts on wednesday evening. The no. 8 seed of the tournament is yet to be determined. box score
the golden bears were assured no less than a share of the regular season title, but in order to take the honor themselves, they had to defeat upper iowa this afternoon. On the outside, the task appeared to be a breeze with the peacocks winning only two games on the year and having gone all season without an nsic victory. But a poor shooting game created some nerves for concordia followers.
with an extremely low 27.0% shooting average in the first period, the golden bears were knotted up with the peacocks 28-28 at halftime. No concordia player put in more than two field goals in the first 20 minutes but, with the help of 12 upper iowa turnovers, the team went into the second half with the simple goal of outscoring the league's worst team through one period of play.
the squad snapped out of its scoring funk to shoot 46.9% from the field in the final period of the regular season, due in large part to the efforts of junior guard zoraa quoie (woodbury, minn.). In her first start of the season, quoie scored 11 second half points and took away five steals to give the golden bears the edge they needed. gillian bjerke (c, jr., detroit lakes, minn.) dumped in nine points and had two steals in the final half. She gave the golden bears their final edge over upper iowa, who had pulled ahead 50-49 with a set of free throws at the 6:16 mark. Back-to-back layups gave cu a 53-50 lead, with more bjerke points tagged on in the final minutes to secure the win.
the final 12 point lead was the largest of the game for concordia, who has the nsic's highest scoring offense and has defeated 10 opponents by 20 or more points this year. The season low shooting average of 36.2% comes on the heels of a season high 65.0% performance on wednesday night over st. Cloud state. With postseason games now looming, the golden bears have a chance to set a new school record for season shooting average, as their current mark of 47.3% is far ahead of the record set in 2007-08 at 44.9%.
bjerke finished as the game's scoring leader with 13 points, also pulling down eight boards to match quoie for the team lead. All of quoie's 11 game points came in the second half. The speedy guard came away with seven steals against the peacocks. Concordia had 14 total steals in the game, which were crucial in tabbing 36 points off of uiu turnovers.
upper iowa was led in the game by jennifer herrick with 12 points and five rebounds. The peacocks shot 38.5% from the field and gave up the rock 28 times throughout the course of the game. They out-scored the golden bears from three-point range, however, hitting seven shots from the distance to cu's four.
the golden bears will host their nsic tournament quarterfinal round at the gangelhoff center this wednesday evening at 7:00 pm. Stay tuned for complete bracket information.
