DES MOINES, Iowa – Freshman Lizzy Wendell's (Blue Springs, Mo.) putback with two seconds left propelled the Drake University women's basketball team to a 74-72 win over Southern Illinois Friday night in front of 1,821 fans at the Knapp Center.
Drake (7-7, 1-2 MVC), who trailed by 12 points with just over 14 minutes remaining in the game, was led by Ashley Bartow's (Sun Prairie, Wis.) career-high 28 points. Wendell finished with 14, while fellow freshmen Caitlin Ingle (Runnells, Iowa) scored 12 key points off the bench, all coming in the second half.
Mercedes Griffin put Southern Illinois (3-11, 1-2 MVC) up 72-70 with a steal and a layup with 46 seconds left in the game, but Ingle answered with her own layup with 32 seconds to tie the score at 72-72. It was the ninth and final tie of the evening.
Drake quickly called a 20-second timeout to set up its defense. With 13 seconds on the game clock, SIU's Carlie Corrigan took a jumper that was long, but Dyana Pierre rebounded the miss. Junior Kyndal Clark (Webb City, Mo.), who scored her 1,000 career point Sunday at Indiana State, stripped Pierre and sprinted down the court.
Clark's runner with four seconds left was just long, however, Wendell flew in and grabbed the ball and scored to break the tie, 74-72. SIU called its final timeout to set up its own play, but Clark nabbed her fourth steal of the game to run out the clock and give Drake its first conference victory. Wendell and Clark each had six rebounds.
“What I'm so happy with is Kyndal making that decision to push the ball at the end,” said head coach Jennie Baranczyk. “We had timeouts left that we could have called, but she made the right read. She had a pretty good look. We had crashers and we know what to do and I love that. That way we were able to save that timeout to call at the end to be able to know what they were going to run.”
Southern Illinois was paced by Griffin's team-high 16 points, while Azia Washington and Sidney Goins each finished with 12. Pierre scored 10 points and grabbed seven boards.
Drake scored 27 points off of SIU's 21 turnovers, while committing a season-low seven turnovers. Redshirt junior Carly Grenfell (York, Neb.) had eight points, including a huge three-pointer with 13:16 remaining that started the Bulldogs' rally. Grenfell added a steal and a layup in the run that lasted three minutes and helped Drake trim its deficit to two points at 54-52 with 11:20 on the clock.
The teams traded baskets until Wendell's two free throws gave Drake its first lead, 56-55, since the 13:12 mark in the opening half. The Bulldogs extended their lead to 60-55 after a layup from Ingle.
However, SIU would not go away as it answered with its own scoring run of 9-0 to take the lead back at 64-60 with 6:05 to go. The Bulldogs responded with five straight points to grab the lead once again at 65-64 with just less than five minutes to play. The final five minutes featured five lead changes and four ties.
The Bulldogs started the contest slowly as they trailed 12-9 with 12:40 left in the first half. Drake hit just three of its first 13 field goal attempts before Bartow hit a layup to trim SIU's lead to 12-11. Bartow added a jumper in the paint to put the Bulldogs ahead for the first time at 13-12 at the under-12 timeout. The forward erupted for nine of the Bulldogs' 13 points.
SIU took a 34-26 halftime lead behind hot shooting from the floor at 50 percent (15-of-30) and from beyond the arc at 44.4 percent (4-of-9). Bartow finished the half with a game-high 15 points on 7-of-10 shooting, but the rest of the team struggled making just 3-of-23 (13 percent) from the field.
Drake welcomes Evansville (6-8, 1-2 MVC) to the Knapp Center Sunday, Jan. 12. Tipoff is set for 2:05 p.m. against the Purple Aces.
