SEWARD, Neb. – Shooting from the 3-point range was one of the No. 9 Concordia women’s basketball team’s strengths in a 92-37 triumph over the Nebraska Wesleyan Prairie Wolves. Eight different Bulldogs combined for 16 total 3-pointers on the night.
Drew Olson’s squad improves to 4-2 overall and evens it out at 2-2 in GPAC play. The Prairie Wolves drop to 3-3, 2-2 GPAC on the season.
Olson said, “I’m proud of how selfless they played today. They really shared the ball and moved the ball really well which gave us so much more open looks than we’ve had in the last few games. Obviously when the ball goes in, we get more and more confident and I felt that opened up the game.”
With 12 different Bulldogs contributing to the scoring column, five were in the double digits. Leading scorer for Concordia was junior Aubri Bro with 15. The Papillion native also grabbed five boards.
Bro said, “Coach really talked to us about passing, I just got a lot of good passes from my teammates. That game (at Doane) gave us a lot of momentum. Coach talks about one game at a time, focus on the present.”
Depth in the Bulldog bench was prevalent in the Wednesday evening contest. Fifty-one of Concordia’s points came from the reserves. Junior Shelby Quinn proved to be a key player coming off the bench, scoring 14 total points, 12 coming from being the arc.
Quinn noted, “We were able to get stops and that way we were able get our offense set up and get a flow so we were able to just fire away and they happened to go in.”
Getting stops and putting up a good defense was a key for the ‘Dogs. The Prairie Wolves were limited to a .226 field goal percentage (12-53) and scored in the double digits in just one quarter in the tilt. Meanwhile, the Bulldogs put up an impressive .479 percentage from the field (35-73) and shot .500 from the 3-point range. The 3-point field goal percentage is the highest this season while the 32 attempts are the second-most in a single game.
Concordia also registered a game-high 24 steals and put up 35 tallies off the Prairie Wolves’ 30 turnovers.
The score was tied just once after Nebraska Wesleyan's Courtney Cook dumped in a layup. The knotted up score was under a minute into the contest and tied things up at two apiece. After a Jade Gottier bucket off a Prairie Wolf turnover, the Bulldogs led the rest of the way. Between the second and third periods, Concordia had a 45-23 advantage.
With the exception of free throws, a stingy Bulldog defense held NWU from scoring until there was just 37 seconds left in the third quarter when Felicia TeKolste made a trey for the Prairie Wolves. Toward the end of the final period, the Concordia D again held its opponent. Nebraska Wesleyan went the final three minutes of play scoreless while the Bulldogs tacked on another nine in the last few minutes.
While the Bulldogs are celebrating a 55 point demolition, they will still have to prepare for a fellow top-20 GPAC team coming up in the next few days.
“Dakota Wesleyan is an awesome team,” Olson noted on upcoming GPAC play. “They’re a tough match-up for us. They’re bigger in almost every position and they’re big players are great player…they’re deep…it’s going to be a really tough battle for us.”
The Bulldogs will face the No. 16 Dakota Wesleyan Tigers on Saturday, Dec. 5 at the Corn Palace. Tipoff is slated for 2 p.m. in Mitchell, S.D.