TC beats Southwestern but stumbles at Bethel

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College women?s basketball team fell to Bethel by a 68-62 margin Saturday.

The loss moved the Bluejays into a third-place tie with hard-charging McPherson in the conference standings with one week left of regular-season games. It also took some of the luster off of Thursday?s sparkling 68-60 win over second-place South?western.


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Brittany Roth goes up for a shot and gets mugged by Jenna Wilson Thursday night in Hillsboro. Roth collected five rebounds and scored six of eight points at the foul line as Tabor evened out the season series against Southwestern.

Bethel

Tabor built a 19-11 lead with 7:36 left in the first half on a second-chance basket by Chelsea Malone, who had buried back-to-back 3-pointers leading up to the gritty score and tallied 12 points in the first half.

Stacie Herman finished the half with 11 points, including a game-tying 3-pointer with 3:38 to go, a tie-breaking 2-pointer with 1:58 left and another 2-point shot good for a 28-24 Tabor lead with 1:08.

But Bethel finished the half on a 7-2 run and the Threshers took a 31-30 advantage into intermission.

A layup by Brittany Roth restored Tabor?s lead 1:01 into the second half, and the Bluejays opened the gap to 45-40.

A 9-0 Bethel run followed, leaving the Bluejays playing catchup most of the rest of the way.

Malone gave Tabor a 50-49 lead at 9:47, and back-to-back baskets by Joanna Pyle?the second of which turned into a traditional 3-point play at 6:13?gave Tabor a short-lived 58-54 lead.

Bethel knotted the score at 58 and 62 before seizing the lead for good with 1:01 left.

A triple by Angela Wood with 17 seconds remaining provided the decisive score for Bethel.

Not counting two throws after Woods? 3-pointer, Bethel shot 21-for-30 at the foul line. The Blue?jays went 12-for-20 from the stripe.

Herman scored 23 points in all, and Malone finished with 18.


Southwestern

Behind 20 points from Stacie Herman, a dozen from Joanna Pyle and 10 from Jordan Crosson, the Bluejays overcame a nine-point deficit and grabbed the lead for good with 3:08 left in the first half.

Jenny Gaskell scored point-blank baskets 56 seconds apart to spark the pivotal run, and Herman lit it up from the field.

Herman?s 3-pointer set up by Pyle at 5:11 made it 22-21, Tabor, and Herman scored three 2-point shots before the halftime buzzer.

Leading 30-26, Tabor blew it open quickly after intermission, and kept it a multiple-possession game for all but 27 seconds of the second half.

A 2-pointer by Chelsea Malone got things rolling 14 seconds out of intermission, and the women rolled their lead up to 40-33 on four consecutive free throws by Brittany Roth, who nailed one pair at 15:30 and another at 15:01.

Southwestern rallied to trim it to 44-42, but Tabor put together an 11-0 run to obtain it biggest lead of the night, 55-42.

With just over three minutes to go, Southwestern conceded it could not stop the Bluejay offense, opting to foul and applying marginally effective full-court pressure instead.

The gambit allowed the Moundbuilders to close the gap to 63-57 with 1:02 to go, and coach Shawn Winter had seen enough.

After a timeout, Malone ran the baseline like a quarterback rolling out of the pocket, then fired a home-run pass over the top of the defense.

Pyle grabbed it on one hop in the Bluejays lane and scooped it in, drawing a foul from the beaten defender in the process. She added the free throw with 1:01 seconds to go.

Pyle wrapped it up with two foul shots with 32 seconds left.

Coming?Tabor (10-6) wraps up its regular season schedule against conference leader Sterling (15-1) at home Thurdsay and Kansas Wesleyan (8-8) on the road Saturday.

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