ST. CHARLES, Mo. — Hot-shooting Bellarmine held off hard-charging Drury down the stretch, as the third-seeded Knights downed second-seed Drury 80-77 in the Great Lakes Valley Conference Championship post-season tourney semifinals Saturday afternoon at Family Arena.
The nationally 10th-ranked Lady Panthers (24-4), saw their 14-game winning streak snapped, and will learn their seeding and draw for the NCAA-II Midwest Regional when the pairings are announced at 9 p.m. Sunday at www.ncaa.com. Drury is safely in the field after ranking No. 3 in each of the last three rankings.
Drury, which trailed by as many as 15 points in the first period, had a couple of cracks to try to force OT in the closing seconds, but senior standout Annie Armstrong – who scored a season-high 27 points and took over the game late – had a 3-point try bounce away and another one blocked in the final 10 seconds as the nationally 24th-ranked Knights (23-3) held on for the victory against the defending GLVC champions.
"A lot of credit goes to Bellarmine …. I think they came out with a lot of energy, and you could tell this was one they really wanted," said Drury coach Molly Miller, whose team lost for the first time since January 9. "When you let a team shoot 52 percent on you, it's hard to win a ballgame. This is a big lesson for us … this time of year, in March, it's not really about your offense. Our offense was fine today.
"It's all about your defense … you've got to get down and guard, and I know we had some defensive lapses. These next few days of practice we'll be focused on getting in a lower stance, communicating more and talking on defense. That's where our lapses were today."
Heather Harman had 14 points off the bench and Alice Heinzler added 11 points for DU, which shot just 42 percent (26 of 62) from the field. The nation's leading 3-point FG shooting team coming in at 44 percent, the Lady Panthers made just 5 of 15 trey attempts (33 percent).
The Knights, meanwhile, hit 33 of 63 shots for the game (54 percent), the first opponent in 14 games to shoot better than 41 percent against the Lady Panthers.
Bellarmine outrebounded the Lady panthers 42-29, with Sarah Galvin pulling down 10 boards to go with her team-high 25 points for the Knights.
Bellamine came out red-hot out of the gate, making 8 of its first 11 shots and bursting out to a 22-7 lead in the game's first seven minutes over the Lady Panthers, whom they'd lost to by 18 at The O' on Feb. 6.
But Drury heated up, put together a 10-0 run, and climbed back into it to trail 26-19 at the quarter break. The Lady Panthers grabbed their first lead on a Heather Harman layup (37-35) with 3:14 left in the second period, but watched the Knights score the last nine points of the half to lead 44-37 at the intermission, as the Knights made 18 of 31 shots (58 percent) over the game's first 20 minutes to Drury's 13 of 35 (37 percent).
Drury had it back down to a two-point game (55-53) after an Armstrong free throw with 2:01 to play in the third quarter, but the Knights pushed the advantage back to nine again at 64-55 after three, touching off a mad celebration by a fired-up Bellarmine squad.
From there, the fourth quarter was a struggle for DU – until Armstrong took over. Playing with four fouls and DU down 76-66 with 3:49 to play, Armstrong scored nine of Drury's final 11 points, with her layup with 43 seconds left making it a one-point deficit (78-77).
Bellarmine's Raven Merriweather scored with 20 seconds remaining at the other end to push the Knights lead back to three (80-77), setting the stage for Armstrong and the Lady Panthers to have a final shot at forcing OT. But her open 3-point try from the wing with 10 seconds left bounced out, and Hannah Dressler's hustle play for the loose ball rebound gave it back to DU for another attempt.
After the timeout, DU worked the ball back into Armstrong's hands, but her trey try with two seconds left was blocked by Mackenzie Martinez as the time ran out and the Knights stormed center court.
"Everyone knew the ball was going to be in our playmaker's hands," Miller said of Armstrong, who hit 10 of 17 shots.
The Lady Panthers, while disappointed they didn't defend their league title, merely realized there's more work to do – next weekend's NCAA tourney.
"That's the thing about it in our locker room … we're still alive," Miller said. "They realize there's a bigger goal in mind that's still out there. We're looking forward to having some good practices and coming back out with a clean slate.
"We won 14 in a row, and now we get a chance to win six in a row. That's our goal moving forward."
