EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. –The Lady Panthers needed every bit of team defense and depth – and also the determined play of two longtime GLVC stars – on Saturday to earn a shot at a sixth-consecutive championship in the Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament.
They stopped a pesky Missouri-St. Louis team 64-54 in a victory that was far from certain until the last few minutes.
Senior Paige Robinson scored 26 points to lead the offense on a day when every point was hard-earned.
She shined in other areas too, making seven rebounds, three steals and three assists.
Robinson was the MVP of last year’s conference tournament and is likely to be again if the Lady Panthers can stop Lewis in the final at 1 p.m. today. The perennial first-team all-conference guard scored 22 in Thursday’s second-round victory over Rockhurst.
Azia Lynch, a first-team GLVC player in 2020-21, stepped up in a critical role and helped slow the post play of Kiara Stewart, who was dominating early for UMSL. She had 11 points and seven rebounds for the game, but only three points and one rebound in the second half.
“She was huge out there,” Drury Coach Amy Eagan said about Lynch. “She kept her (Stewart) off the boards and gave us a great game.”
It was some special moments for Lynch, a graduate player who has worked all season to recover from a knee injury that she suffered in the Elite 8 last year.
She and Payton Richards have both played on four tournament champions, so the potential of winning another one is special, Lynch said: “This is the last go for us. I felt the adrenaline of being in the tournament. We know what we all have to do. My job today was defense.”
She also chipped in six points, two steals and two rebounds. “That was a team effort today. We have high expectations,” Lynch said.
Graduate guard Terrion Moore had four steals, four rebounds and seven points as a leader of the defensive effort.
The second-seeded Lady Panthers led by four at halftime and built a game-high 11-point lead with 1:42 left in the third quarter. But guard Jalysa Stokes (18 points) then hit three 3-pointers and forward Alex LaPorta (16 points, eight rebounds) also made some big baskets. LaPorta’s jumper with 2:51 left pulled UMSL to 58-52, but the Titans scored only two points the rest of the way.
Drury forced 14 turnovers in the second half and 25 for the game. Eagan substituted freely from the opening minutes to keep her players fresh and to wear down the less-deep UMSL team. “We wore those guards down,” she said. “We like to play that deep so we can play really hard. It’s nice to have a lot of kids.”
It’s also nice to have a player like Robinson: “She’s a big-game player. She makes things happen,” Eagan. Robinson said the strong defense paid dividends late in the game: “We knew we had to get them out on the run. We can tell by their body language that we were wearing them down. We had to keep them off the boards and the three-point line at the end.”
The victory moved Drury to 30-4 and UMSL dropped to 23-5.
The two teams showed why they both finished with 17-3 regular-season records in the GLVC. Drury was seeded second and UMSL third because of the conference’s rating system.
Drury substituted heavily in the first half after some early fouls while defending Stewart, who scored eight and pulled down six rebounds in the half.
It paid off with a nine-point run by the Lady Panthers to end the first quarter up 16-12, The Lady Panthers led 30-26 at halftime after Robinson made a steal and a long pass to Alana Findley for a layup with 5 seconds left.
Findley played with foul trouble for much of the game, but still totaled nine points and four rebounds. Robinson drew a foul on the inbounds and Findley pushed in a layup as the buzzer sounded, but it was waived off after a long review.
Robinson scored 11 in the half, hitting a pair of treys and a 3-point play on a tough reverse layup and free throw.
It was a payback of sorts: UMSL defeated Drury 75-65 0n Feb. 4 in St. Louis.
The Lady Panthers will play fifth-seeded Lewis for the title at 1 p.m. Sunday.
The Flyers dominated the second half and took a 88-72 victory over top-seeded Southern Indiana in the first semifinal game.
The teams split the season series, but Lewis won 87-79 the last time they played. “There’s definitely a chip on our shoulders, a motivation, about this game,” said Robinson, who will be seeking her fourth conference tournament title. We just have to come out strong.”
Eagan predicts a tough game because Lewis has been playing well lately: “It’s going to be a battle.”
