ST. CHARLES, Mo. - Freshman Kyndal Clark (Webb City, Mo.) scored the game winning basket with seven seconds left in the game to give the Drake Bulldogs a 56-54 win over the Illinois State Redbirds on Friday night in the quarterfinals of the State Farm Missouri Valley Conference tournament at Family Arena. Clark, a member of the 2012 MVC all-freshman team scored Drake's last four points and finished the game with eight points.
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Drake (17-14), who tied for fifth in the regular season but fell to the No.7 seed due to tiebreakers advances to the semifinals on Saturday afternoon at 4:05 p.m and will face No. 3 seed Wichita State and the game will be shown on Fox Sports Midwest. The Bulldogs started the tournament with a win over Evansville on Thursday night.
Rachael Hackbarth (Colgate, Wis.) scored 20 points and grabbed ten rebounds to pace Drake. Amber Wollschlager (Millbank, S.D. added 14 points and Morgan Reid (Kansas City, Mo.) had 11 points.
Illinois State (18-12) was led by Katie Broadway, who scored 20 points. Candace Sykes added 17 points and Marley Hall had 11 points for the Redbirds. Hackbarth and Broadway both seniors were each named to the All-MVC first-team earlier in the week and both played all 40 minutes on Friday night.
"I am really proud of our team's effort and their determination, their heart," Drake head coach Amy Stephens said. "To steal a word from assistant coach Crawford (Kirk), 'sandpaper'-just grinding it out. It wasn't always pretty but we got the job done and our defense was tenacious. When they got up eight with ten minutes, we could have rolled over and given up, and we just refused to go away and hung around and executed what we needed to."
Trailing 46-38 after a Marley Hall basket with 10:46 left in the game, Drake battled back with a 6-0 run the last points on a Wollschlager bucket with 6:20 left in the game. ISU was held scoreless for nearly four minutes before Sykes made two free throws to put the Redbirds up four but Hackbarth answered with a short jumper to keep the Redbirds lead to two. Sykes came back with another jumper but Wollschlager answered once again for Drake to make it ISU, 50-48 with 4:25 left.
Neither team scored for nearly the next two minutes before Reid scored her first points of the second half to force a tie at 50-50. Reid blocked Broadway on the Redbirds next procession and Hackbarth pulled down the rebound to give the Bulldogs a chance to take the lead.
Once again Wollschlager came up with a clutch jumper to give Drake a 52-50 lead with 1:54 left in the game, the Bulldogs first lead since just under 11 minutes in the first half. Hall answered for the Redbirds to force another tie with 1:22 to go.
After a timeout, Jamie Russell forced a turnover by Clark and Sykes knocked down a jumper to give ISU the lead back at 54-52. Clark bounced back from her earlier turnover and drove the length of the floor and tied the score with a layup with 45 seconds left in the game and forced Illinois State to take a timeout. Out of the timeout, Sykes missed a jumper and Wollschlager pulled down the board. Clark once again drove the length of the court and made the game-winner with eight seconds left.
ISU had one final chance but the Bulldogs forced Broadway to make a bad pass that bounced almost to half court and allowed the game clock to expire to help the Bulldogs advance to the semifinals for the first time since 2009.
"On the second to last shot I felt like I kind of had the edge on her," Clark said. "I was off balanced and that's how I just threw it up there and it went in. On the last one I knew Russell was going to come in under me and try to swoop it, or try to block me, so I knew I had to adjust my shot, but at that point I knew I just had to make it."
Drake shot 25-of-48 (52.1 percent) from the field for the game and outrebounded Illinois State, 31-27. The Redbirds made 5-of-17 (29.4 percent) from the three-point line.
