SPRINGFIELD, Mo.– The top-seeded Drury Lady Panthers will have the opportunity to notch a fifth consecutive Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament title on Sunday afternoon, after turning back the tournament’s fifth seed, Missouri -St. Louis 75-62 in the semifinal round Saturday at the O’Reilly Family Event Center in Springfield.
GLVC Player-of-the-Year, junior Paige Robinson paced the scoring with 18 points for Drury, while senior Azia Lynch dropped in 15 and fellow senior Emily Parker added 12 in moving the Lady Panthers to 19-1 for the season.
“They’ve been here before, and done it,” said Drury head coach Amy Eagan. “They’ve all played a lot of minutes, and that does help, and they’ve got the game experience and know how to play tired, which was important today.”
After a tightly contested opening period, which saw Drury lead 13-11 over the Tritons, the Lady Panthers used a late second-quarter burst, scoring the final ten points of the period, and held a 38-21 advantage at halftime.
UMSL inched back into the game in the second half and trailed by just eight points with a little more than seven minutes to play, but Drury was able to control the tempo and prevailed down the stretch.
“We knew it was going to be a physical battle,” added Eagan. “We knew they were very good in the low post, so the goal was to limit their three’s and keep them from getting hot from outside.”
The Tritons, in fact, would finish with just three made long-range shots, while Drury drained only four from outside the arc, with three of them coming from freshman Allie Clevenger, who also finished in double figures with 11.
Alex LaPorta topped the Triton scoring with 20 points as they closed their season at 11-8 overall.
The Lady Panthers, who have won seven GLVC championships, including the last four in a row, will look to add to their impressive list of postseason GLVC accomplishments when they take on the winner of the tournament’s other semifinal matchup between second seed Truman State and sixth seed William Jewell in the championship game.
“We haven’t played on back-to-back days this year, so it’s going to be interesting to see what the tournament final looks like tomorrow for us,” said Eagan.
The championship game will tipoff at 1 pm, again at the O’Reilly Family Event Center.
