Playing in the quarterfinals of the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference post-season tournament, Bethany College used physical play, an aggressive full-court press and good-old fashioned determination to defeat the regular season champion Bluejays, 54-47.

"There's been a lot of hints of this type of thing with our team off and on, and tonight it caught up with us," coach Rusty Allen said. "The timing wasn't the greatest, but when would the timing have been any better?

"In the (conference championship) run we went on, if it had caught up to us any sooner, we wouldn't be going to the national tournament."

The "thing" Allen referred to was his team's lack of execution, primarily on the offensive end.

"We made a lot of poor decisions with the ball," Allen said. "We made bad decisions on passes and we forced bad shots. We tried to throw passes that weren't really there and we didn't move without the ball."

Initially, ninth ranked Tabor appeared to have its game face on, cruising to a 9-4 lead in a little more than four minutes of action.

But Bethany answered with a 10-0 run over the next three minutes to take a 14-9 lead. Inflicting the primary damage were Bethany's Katelyn Hinkin and Kenyada Frazier, who combined for the Swedes' first 17 points.

Tabor fought back to tie the score at 17 on a basket by Nicole Ellis, but Bethany took a 26-24 lead into the halftime locker room.

Helping Bethany were 13 first-half Tabor turnovers caused by the Swedes' full-court pressure.

"In the first half, their press really took us out of what we were trying to accomplish," Allen said.

But championship teams make championship adjustments. Tabor effectively broke the Bethany pressure in the second half, but then ran into trouble once they crossed center court.

"I thought we ran past their press pretty effectively in the second half," Allen said. "But we still didn't execute and we made a lot of poor decisions with the ball."

One constant for the Bluejays that kept them in contention was its nationally ranked defense.

Tabor limited the Swedes to just 33 percent (11-33) shooting in the first half and a chillier 23 percent (7-30) in the second half.

After the game was tied twice early in the second half, Bethany built a lead as large as five points, 40-35, with 8:48 to play.

But Tabor put together a 10-0 run over the next four minutes, sparked by a Donya Anderson 3-point basket, to take its largest lead of the second half, 45-40, with 5:12 to play. All seemed well in Bluejay land.

Allen said the scoring outburst was easy to explain.

"We made shots, we passed the ball better and we played with a lot of inspiration defensively," he said. "We had a chance to take control of the game."

But Tabor didn't capitalize on that chance. Little did the sparse crowd assembled at Tabor Gymnasium know, but Tabor would score just two more points the rest of the evening.

Consecutive baskets by Hinkin and Esther Dohl cut Tabor's lead to 45-44 with 3:48 to play.

A pair of Frazier free throws put Bethany on top 46-45 with 2:57 to play and the Bluejays wouldn't own the lead again.

Bethany's final 10 points came from 15 feet away as Tabor misfired on offense forcing them to foul on defense and the Swedes took advantage, pulling away at the end for the 54-47 victory.

Even though they struggled making their shots from the field, the Swedes managed 15 more shots than Tabor, due primarily to their 21 offensive rebounds.

"As a team, that's been one of our weaknesses-keeping good offensive rebounding teams from hurting us," Allen said. "That's been a weakness for us all season, but it's not like we haven't tried to work on it."

Anderson led the Bluejays with 12 points as Tabor hit 18 of 48 shots from the field (38 percent) while Bethany was limited to just (18 of 63) 29 percent.

Hinkin took game-scoring honors for Bethany with 19 points, Frazier added 13 and Dallas Archer 10.

Bethany won the rebounding battle 45-39, led by Frazier with 17 (nine on offense), while Anderson led Tabor with 11.

Allen said playing Bethany was an unfortunate luck of the draw.

"The circumstance was odd, and we shouldn't have been playing them in this round," he said of the Swedes, who forfeited 11 victories to fall to a No. 9 seed. "That's really ridiculous, but there's nothing we could do about it.

"But I'm not making excuses-I tip my hat to Bethany," he added. "They played with a lot of intensity and there was no doubt in their minds they could beat us."

The loss not only broke Tabor's 19 game-winning streak but handed the Bluejays their first home-court loss this season in 13 games.

Allen said Bethany's defense was the key to its victory.

"We hold a team to 54 points and lose-that says something about their defense more than anything else."

Tabor connected on just two of 13 3-point attempts (15 percent) and also hit a frigid nine of 16 (56 percent) from the free-throw line.

Tabor fell victim to its poor ball-handling against the Bethany press, which resulted in 25 turnovers.

With the loss, Tabor fell to 24-5 for the season and now awaits the pairings for the NAIA Division II national tournament in Sioux City, Iowa, March 9-15.

Tabor's first-round pairing will be posted on the Free Press Web site as soon as it becomes available.

Allen said he, his staff and the players all know they have work to do.

"They all agreed it (the loss) is a blessing in disguise," he said. "There were things we had become complacent about and tonight they bit us.

"In some games where we weren't executing properly, we were able to change it in mid-stream during the game, but tonight we weren't able to get it done," he added. "We just need to come into the game focused and ready to execute the game-every game."