ST. LOUIS – The feel of the postseason mentality has now taken hold, but Missouri Baptist women's basketball didn't back down from the pressure Thursday night. MBU persevered through a scrappy game against Harris-Stowe State (HSSU) and defeated the Hornets for its seventeenth win of the season in the American Midwest Conference. The Spartans, who are still in the hunt for the AMC regular season title, made sure to keep things that way with the victory inside the Petty SRC.
 
MoBap (21-4, 17-2 in AMC) was matched in intensity by Harris-Stowe (4-20, 3-16 in AMC), which despite being shorthanded gave the Spartans a game. MBU edged HSSU 63-54, and in the process saw another addition to the history books from senior Alexis Allstun. The native of Jackson, Mo., with a basket at the 6:55 mark of the fourth quarter, became the seventh player all-time to crest the 1,000-point mark for a career in MBU women's basketball program history.
 
Allstun was the highlight of the evening, but Bryce Dowell stole the show. The junior from Belleville, Ill., shot the lights out, hitting five 3-pointers and scoring 24 points on 8-for-13 shooting from the floor. Tionne Taylor was a force on offense as well, scoring 16 points. Guard Deyana Dodd notched the high for home side rebounds and steals with nine and four, respectively, and Allstun added four blocks to her tally of eight points that put her in the 1,000 club.
 
MBU and HSSU went back-and-forth the whole way, with Dowell's strong 12-point first half keeping the Spartans afloat during some key stretches of game. It was a Dowell 3-pointer at two and a half minutes remaining, with the game still in the balance, that gave MBU a bit of breathing room and its largest advantage of the evening at eight points. Dowell then made three free throws down the stretch to put the Hornets away. The Spartans never got the lead into double-digits at any point, a far cry from the 84-50 thrashing MoBap inflicted on Harris-Stowe on January 12 when the schools met the first time this season.
 
It looked as though for a stretch that it may not happen against HSSU. Between the first quarter where Allstun scored six points to put her at 999 for her career, until her monumental final two of the night, shots just weren't falling. In somewhat poetic fashion, the most recent 1,000-point scorer in Taylor (who reached the mark last season) lofted a pass down low to Allstun, who was practically all alone under the goal and made easy work to put the lay up home and give the Spartans some much needed hype and momentum.
 
"Alexis Allstun, on her night [and] on her thousand-point night, man, it feels good," head coach Sam Pearson said. "She was apart of my first recruiting class, and she's a cornerstone piece to our success, so it really feels good to celebrate her this evening. We got one more Saturday."

Other performances of note for MBU came from Kasey Rice (9 points), and Deyana Dodd (4 points, 3 rebounds, 3 assists).
 
The final game of the regular season, and possibly final home game for this team, will come on Saturday, Feb. 18th. With it brings the always bittersweet Senior Day, as Allstun, Taylor and Lauren Ebert will be ceremoniously honored as longstanding members of this year's team. Tip-off will occur at 1:00 pm, with the pregame festivities to begin shortly beforehand.