ST. LOUIS – In its third meeting with the Owls this season, Missouri Baptist women's basketball overpowered William Woods in the AMC tournament quarterfinals 58-45 to advance and win its 18th game of the season.
MBU (18-11, 14-4 AMC) took down William Woods (10-19, 7-11 AMC), who were matched up in a No. 3 vs. No. 6 seed matchup for the rights to move onto the conference semifinals. The victor would likely win a date with Columbia College, who prevailed in overtime against Central Baptist in its quarterfinal draw. The Spartans managed to hang tough in what was a defensive bout of a first half before turning things on in the second.
After going into the half up by a score of 25-19, the home side scored twice on buckets from junior
Alexis Allstun, but then surrendered 8-straight points to make things 29-27 MBU. This prompted a full team timeout with six minutes left in the third from the Spartans. Head coach Sam Pearson demonstrably implored his team to pick back up the fight while in the team huddle.
What followed, after a scoreless three and a half minutes, was a run of superb proportions. It started with guard
Kamryn Mack's 3-pointer and was capped off with a Mack jumper four minutes later in the early stages of the fourth quarter. In all, Mobap managed a 21-1 run to broaden its advantage out well into double digits and all but end it.
Mack served as a spark plug for the Spartans by scoring those 5 points to start and complete the big scoring run, but also registered five rebounds and four assists. The four dimes were enough to lead MBU in that category from off the bench.
Leading scorer was split between another bench threat and the usual suspect of
Jalexis Russell and
Tionne Taylor, respectively. The two scored 15 points each, and Allstun followed not far behind with 13 of her own. Russell was everywhere for the Spartans, pulling down seven boards in addition to three blocks and a pair of steals and assists. Taylor also chipped in with four steals.
Other notable MBU performances included
Lauren Ebert (three points, nine rebounds) and
Kayleigh Winch (seven points, two rebounds).
Given the current state of the AMC tournament bracket, Missouri Baptist will have to travel to Columbia, Mo. to take on the 2-seeded Cougars in the next round. Friday, Feb. 25th at 7 PM in CoMo is the time and place for the Spartans to look to continue their postseason dream.
