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Ed Beach (Drury Sports Information) SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – The Drury Lady Panthers used a swarming defense to create 37 Missouri Baptist turnovers to pick up a 90-54 exhibition win on Tuesday night at the O’Reilly Family Event Center.
Drury led 17-13 after the first quarter, then pulled away outscoring the Spartans 21-8 in the second period and 29-12 in the third. The Lady Panthers built the lead with a defense that converted Missouri Baptist turnovers into 49 points.
“It was definitely stressed at practice after the Columbia game that this is how we want to play so the mentality was different,” said Drury head coach Molly Miller. “We got after it and I think Daejah Bernard did a really good job of sparking us defensively.”
Bernard, a freshman from St. Joseph, Missouri and Benton High School, had nine points on 4-of-6 shooting, to go along with eight rebounds, four assists and two steals.
“If she can play like that as a freshman every game, she’s going to have a lot of success,” said Miller. “I’m very proud of her buy-in right now. We need her to play a certain type of way and she showed that today.”
Adrienne Horn led five Lady Panthers in double-figures with 15 points. The sophomore from St. Louis added seven rebounds. All 11 Drury players that saw action scored in the game.
Briya Wilborn led Missouri Baptist with 10 points.
Drury was without senior guard Alice Heinzler who missed the game with a foot injury.
Tuesday’s game was the Lady Panthers second of three exhibition games. Sunday, they take on NCAA-I and Big Ten opponent Illinois. Tipoff is at 2 p.m. at the State Farm Center in Champaign, Illinois.
