by Chris Brannick
JOPLIN, Mo. – Central Oklahoma couldn’t keep pace with Missouri Southern Saturday afternoon and suffered an 85-71 setback in MIAA play.
UCO is 7-12 overall following the loss and the Bronchos are 4-11 in league play.
“Missouri is a good team and we just couldn’t get stops today,” first-year head women’s coach Emma Andrews said. “We played well on offense, but just needed to slow them down and we couldn’t. When you hit 12 3-pointers and shoot 50 percent, it’s hard to keep up with that.”
Aspen Williston led the Bronchos with 25 points, seven rebounds and six blocked shots. She went 10-for-19 from the floor, hit one 3-pointer, and made 4 of 6 attempts from the free-throw line. Karly Wadsworth also had a big game, scoring 18 points on 5 of 14 shooting. She hit four 3-pointers and also had five assists in the game.
UCO took an early lead in the game when Willison knocked down a 3-pointer that made it 3-2. Wadsworth followed with her first 3-pointer to give UCO a 6-5 lead. But Missouri Southern answered that with an 8-0 run and took control of the game. The Bronchos had a response too and whittled the lead down to two points by the end of the quarter, 19-17.
The Bronchos tied the game on the first possession of the second quarter and kept it close for most of the second quarter, but Southern found another 8-0 run in the final three and a half minutes of the quarter. Brooke Rayner ended the run with a pair of free-throws with 11 seconds left, but Southern hit a 3-pointer at the halftime buzzer to take a 44-34 lead into the break.
Missouri Southern used a 13-3 run early in the third quarter to pull away from the Bronchos. UCO trailed by as many as 20 points in the third frame, 69-49, before a 6-1 run to end the quarter to bring the deficit to 15 points heading into the final quarter.
Southern never led by more than 20 points during the fourth quarter, but UCO also could never get the deficit closer than 10 points for the final 10 minute of the game.
Rayner added nine points and Tayler Factor scored eight points off the bench. Aliyah Llanusa added six points to go with three rebounds and three steals. River Romine also scored five off the bench.
