St. Louis, Missouri – Following a dominant showing against Hannibal-LaGrange University on Thursday, the Missouri Baptist Women's Basketball team managed to grind out a second conference win, 66-55, on the road on Saturday against the Harris-Stowe State Hornets. The victory improved the Spartans record to 5-5 on the season and 2-0 in the AMC.
MoBap made the short trip down Interstate 64 and arrived ready to grab an early lead. The Spartans outpaced the Hornets 19-17 in the first in a back-and-forth quarter. The second saw the home side fight back and lead for a brief period, but MBU clawed their way back behind the scoring of junior
Lauren Ebert and sophomore
Kayleigh Winch to lead 36-31 at halftime.
Ebert led all scorers at the break with 12, finishing the day with 17 on 5-11 shooting. Winch chipped in with nine off the bench and had five rebounds to boot. The top scorer for the Spartans, guard
Tionne Taylor, did the majority of her 19 points of damage from the charity stripe. Taylor was 10-13 from the free throw line.
Most of those points and free throws for Taylor came in the second half, as MBU outpaced Harris-Stowe throughout the third and fourth quarter by a three-point margin in both frames. Taylor scored 14, split evenly across the third and fourth, to pace the visitors. The Hornets were pesky though, getting to within four early in the fourth before the Spartans took control, building to an eventual 14-point advantage late in the game to finish the hosts off. It was head coach Sam Pearson's 19th conference win in the last two seasons and fifth in a row against Harris-Stowe State. Pearson now needs just seven wins to reach 50 for his career as head coach of Missouri Baptist.
Other key contributors for the Spartans included forward
Joelle Atkins, who succeeded in bringing down 10 rebounds. It was Atkins' third such game this year hitting double figures in boards. Ebert led MoBap in steals with four and also had eight rebounds. The game was fairly even across multiple team statistical categories, including points in the paint (28-26 in favor of MBU) and bench points (12-10 in favor of HSSU).
Missouri Baptist will not face another AMC opponent until after the Christmas break. The Spartans have three games remaining until that break comes, with their next contest coming in a week's time against Mount Mercy University at home on Saturday, Dec. 11 at 3:00 PM in the Carl & Deloris Petty SRC.
