Dec. 31, 2008 – After building an eight-point halftime lead, the Truman women’s basketball team was caught early in the second half and couldn’t hold on in a 63-60 loss to Southwest Baptist in Bolivar on Wednesday afternoon.
The Bulldogs (3-9, 0-5 MIAA) pushed its lead to 38-25 on a Malorie Kiecker lay-up with just over a minute to play in the first half, before SBU pieced together a 15-2 run spanning the intermission to knot the score at 40 prior to the first media timeout of the second frame.
From there, neither team pushed the margin to greater than three until the Bearcats (4-7, 1-3 MIAA) got an old-fashioned three-point play by freshman Mia Gilreath with 2:37 remaining to give SBU a 59-55 edge. The squads traded buckets to 61-57, before Truman junior Julie Guinn drilled a three-pointer to slice the deficit to one at 61-60 with 57 seconds left.
On the Bearcats’ ensuing possession, Courtney Shewmaker got into the lane late in the shot clock and saw her runner hit the back of the rim and drop through, widening the gap to three with 24 seconds to play.
However, Guinn missed a runner of her own in the lane coming out of a Bulldog timeout, and Truman was unable to get a potential tying shot off before the buzzer following a missed SBU free throw.
For the second straight game, the Bulldogs came out red-hot, dropping 56% of its first-half shots but cooled off drastically in the second half, as the Bearcats held Truman to just a 33% clip in the final 20 minutes. Senior Georgia Mueller and junior Laura Joya led Truman offensively with 14 points apiece with Joya nearing a triple-double by tacking on eight rebounds and seven assists. Freshman Breanna Daniels scored 12 points as the only other Bulldog in double-figures.
Truman hit four more field goals than SBU, but the host Bearcats drained ten three-pointers and converted four more free throws. The Bulldogs captured a 44-29 advantage on the glass but turned the ball over 14 times to SBU’s five.
The MIAA’s leading scorer, Courtney Creed, led all players with 17 points, while Shewmaker guided the Bearcat attack with a balanced eight points and seven assists.
Truman will be back in action on Saturday at Fort Hays (Kan.) State in the second game of a current three-game road trip crossing three states. The Bulldogs will wrap up the trek with a Wednesday (Jan. 7) evening affair at Nebraska-Omaha before returning home to Pershing Arena for a Saturday (Jan. 10) night contest against rival Northwest Missouri.