WINONA, Minn. – The Winona State women's basketball team saw its perfect home record come to an end Saturday night, falling to Augustana 83-65 Saturday in its regular season finale in McCown Gymnasium.
The Warriors committed 15 turnovers in the first half, and the Vikings capitalized in a big way as their pressing defense resulted in a 28-2 advantage in points off turnovers in the opening period. The Vikings also attempted 16 more shots than WSU, going 19-of-37 (51.4 percent) while WSU made just 9 of 21 shots (42.9 percent).
The score could have been more lopsided were it not for an 11-3 foul differential in favor of the Warriors, who made 11 of 15 free throws in the first half compared to just three for the Vikings.
Roelofs had two early baskets as WSU had an early 6-4 lead and an Emily Passint jumper gave the Warriors a brief 12-11 lead. Augustana countered with a 10-0 run that was an early turning point in the game as Kayla Timmerman was called for a technical foul that Augie's Shaunteva Ashley – who scored a game-high 30 points – took advantage of to give the Vikings a 21-13 lead with 11:33 left in the first half.
The Augie tandem of Sydney Rome and Allie Koehn soon after hit back-to-back threes as the run extended to 18-3 with the score stretching to 29-15 with 9:41 to play, at which point the Vikings had made 12 shots while the Warriors had only attempted 12 shots.
Alexis Foley drove to the basket and converted on the 3-point play opportunity to make it 34-19 with under seven minutes to play, Ashley continued to be too much as a 3-pointer put the Vikings up 45-27 and Rome hit one more to put the Vikings up by 19, 48-29, at halftime.
The Warriors opened the second half on an 8-0 run capped off by a Roelofs 3-pointer and a Foley free throw to cut the lead to 11 and a Kayla Timmerman layup on the next possession pulled WSU to within 10 at 49-39 with 16:10 to play, but WSU could not and would not get the deficit back to single digits. An Ashley 3-point play quickly got it back up to 16 at 57-41, and after the Warriors got it back to 10 again thanks in part to four free throws from Jenny Weiland, back-to-back 3-pointers from the Vikings put it right back up to 16 and the lead would hover between 14 and 18 points for the remainder of the game.
Timmerman led the Warriors with 16 points on 6-of-11 shooting, while Tara Roelofs scored 11 points on 5-of-11 shooting – including WSU's only 3-pointer of the game. Hannah McGlone added 10 as did Connor Nagle – who also led the Warriors with seven rebounds.
Winona State (19-7, 15-7 NSIC) earns the south No. 3 seed in the NSIC/Sanford Health Tournament and will open play with a home game Wednesday against north No. 6 seed University of Mary at 7 p.m. in McCown Gymnasium.
