CARBONDALE, Ill. – The No. 23/23 Drake University women's basketball team held off a resilient Southern Illinois team Friday night for a 71-64 Missouri Valley Conference road win at SIU Arena.
Becca Hittner (Urbandale, Iowa) led Drake (22-5, 14-1 MVC) with a game-high 23 points and added seven rebounds.
Maddy Dean (Jordan, Minn.) made four-three-pointers, the last one a late three-ball with just under one minute to play, and finished with 19 points.
Sammie Bachrodt (Wichita, Kan.) added 14 points, four assists, four steals and three rebounds.
SIU (13-13, 6-9 MVC), which trailed by 15 early in the third quarter after Dean's layup, was paced by Makenzie Silvey's 15 points. Abby Brockmeyer and Kristen Nelson chipped in 12 and 10 points, respectively, off the bench.
Dean, who made her first three triples in the first eight minutes of the game, knocked down her final one with 57 seconds left. That three-pointer paired with two free throws by Dean on the prior possession pushed the Bulldogs' lead to seven after the Salukis had pulled back to just two points. Drake then made five of its last six free throws to seal the road win as SIU tried to extend the game.
Drake led 32-19 at halftime with a strong second-quarter when it outscored SIU, 17-9. The Salukis didn't make their first three-pointer until right before the halftime buzzer as Lauren Hartman beat the clock. Dean, Hittner and Bachrodt led the Bulldogs with nine, eight and seven points, respectively.
SIU used a hot-shooting third quarter to make it a single digit game heading to the final period. The Saluki cut their deficit to two points five times in the fourth quarter, but the Bulldogs answered every time with a score. Bachrodt, Dean, Hittner and Rhine scored 23 of Drake's 25 points in the fourth quarter, the other two points coming from a clutch pair of free throws by
Maddie Monahan (Silver Lake, Minn.) for the Bulldogs' final points with seven seconds left.
Hittner scored 10 points in the fourth quarter while Rhine had five. Rhine finished with seven points as her impressive streak of consecutive double-figures ended at 34. She helped the Bulldogs in other ways pulling down five rebounds and nabbing three steals, the last one led to Dean's dagger three-pointer.
Drake closes its final road trip Sunday at Missouri State (18-8, 14-1 MVC) in a battle of the MVC's two first-place teams. Tipoff is scheduled for 2 p.m. and will be streamed on ESPN+.
