Creighton University
Southern Illinois
Bluejays Cruise to 62-43 Win Over Salukis in Women's Hoops
2/3/2011 9:56:00 PM | Women's Basketball
OMAHA, Neb. – Creighton swiped a season-high 15 steals in cruising to a 62-43 win over Southern Illinois Thursday night at D.J. Sokol Arena. The Bluejays out-scored the Salukis 28-5 in points off of turnovers, as DaNae Moore and Ally Jensen both notched career-highs in steals in the 19-point win.
Creighton (14-7) now stands alone in second place in the Missouri Valley Conference with an 8-2 league mark, while the Salukis drop to 2-19 on the year and 0-10 in MVC action.
The Bluejays never trailed in improving to 9-2 at D.J. Sokol Arena this year, while posting their fourth home win of the season in which they were never behind. Creighton's first three field goals of the game were three-pointers, one each from Carli Tritz, Sam Schuett and Sarah Nelson in helping to build a 13-2 lead to start the game. CU's largest lead of the first half came after a Tritz free throw put the Jays up 30-15 with 47 seconds to play, but the Salukis used a pair of late turnovers to help close the half on a 6-0 run in the final 33 seconds to make the halftime score 30-21 in favor of the home team.
SIU turned the ball over 17 times in the first half, leading to 18 of Creighton's 30 points in the first 20 minutes of play. Tritz led the team with eight points and four rebounds in the first half.
Creighton scored the first 10 points of the second half and held the Salukis without a field goal for the first four minutes of the half to take control of the sloppy affair. Creighton's largest lead of the game came with 8:08 left in the contest, when Kelsey Woodard knocked down a three-pointer to make the score 56-30. The Jays would make just two field goals over the final eight minutes while coasting to their fourth straight win.
Woodard led the Jays with 13 points, moving into a tie for 10th place in school history with 1,356 career points. She was 2-for-5 from three-point range to move into a tie for 11th place in MVC history with 235 career triples.
Schuett finished with 10 points and 10 rebounds for her third double-double of the season – all in MVC play. Tritz posted 11 points and five rebounds, while playing a season-low 19 minutes in the blowout. Moore swiped five steals for a new career-high and Jensen notched four steals to help the Jays to a season-best 15 thefts. All 11 active Bluejays played at least 10 minutes in the win, including Alyssa Kamphaus who went 4-for-10 from the field for eight points in just 10 minutes.
Teri Oliver of SIU led all players with 18 points, making 4-of-10 three-pointers. Katrina Swingler had 10 points and 10 rebounds to go along with a team-high three steals for the Salukis.
The Jays snagged 45 rebounds in the win, out-scoring SIU 19-4 in second-chance points. CU out-scored SIU 30-14 in the paint and 28-5 off of turnovers.
The Bluejays will look to finish a sweep of their four-game homestand when they play host to Evansville on Saturday morning. CU and UE will tip at 11:05 am inside D.J. Sokol Arena.
