The Baker University women’s basketball team took its first Heart of America Athletic Conference loss of the season Saturday against Culver-Stockton College in a 60-57 thriller.
Coming into the game, C-SC was 0-4 in conference play. However, it was clear the home team was ready to battle to get its first HAAC win.
C-SC got an early lead over Baker, which it maintained for a majority of the first half. With 5:22 left in the half, though, C-SC let that lead slip out of its grasp.
“In the last minutes of the first half, we really took control and shut them down,” sophomore Avery Vogts said. “We executed our offense well by slowing the game down and running our plays efficiently.”
After trailing by 14, Baker successfully fought to turn the game around and got its first lead of the game going into halftime, 32-31.
Senior Alisha Fanshier, Baker’s leading scorer on the night, drained a 3-pointer to open up the second half.
Baker’s 8-point lead with 14 minutes left in the game was put in jeopardy when C-SC went on a 7-0 run to cut the score to 43-42. From then on out, the teams were neck and neck as they battled for the win.
C-SC came out on top and improved its record to 6-9 overall and 1-4 in the HAAC. Baker is now 3-1 in conference play and 10-6 overall on the season.
Vogts said the team needed to be more aggressive on the defensive end in order to beat C-SC and wishes it could have been more consistent during the game.
“We had times where our defense was really good and able to shut them out, but then we would have times when we weren’t playing as hard as we should,” Vogts said. “We weren’t very consistent with our playing and we’ll need to work on that inorder to beat teams the way we should.”
Fanshier finished the game with a total of 15 points. Sophomore Kyrstie Ehm came away with seven points and freshman Macy Wallisch led the team with 12 rebounds
Culver-Stockton barely outrebounded Baker, 52-51. Baker gave up 23 turnovers compared to the 19 they forced on C-SC.
Baker will have its next chance at a conference victory Thursday as it takes on rival Mid-America Nazarene at 5:30 pm in the Collins Center.
