Lady Bison Rally Past SNU

February 21, 2008

Oklahoma Baptist scored a huge road win Thursday night, completing its first sweep of Southern Nazarene since 1986-87 with a 71-63 come-from-behind victory.

Down 53-44 with 13:18 left in the game, OBU called timeout and coach John McCullough asked his team to dig in.

Fifteen consecutive missed SNU field goal attempts later, OBU had a 64-56 lead on a 20-3 run. Jennifer Jupin, who had been quiet for most of the game, scored all seven of her points in that spurt.

"That's been the nature of our team," said OBU coach John McCullough. "I told them we needed to get stops and they came out and did it. We just have so much heart on this team."

Betsy Simmons shook off foul trouble and kept getting rebounds and blocked shots in the stretch run.

"We just have a great bunch of girls and we all fit together and play well together," said Simmons.

The first half saw nine lead changes and four ties with Southern Nazarene scoring the last six points for a 35-33 halftime advantage.

SNU expanded the lead to 48-40 in the first five minutes of the second half and led 53-44 with 13:18 to play.

From there, the Storm hit a cold front, not hitting a field goal for more than 10 minutes before Tejana Elmore scored at the 3:10 mark of the game.

Simmons and Heather Graham led the Lady Bison with 19 points each with Simmons hauling in 12 rebounds.

Ashley Gamble had 11 points and Jayme Glover scored 10 to pick up her second consecutive double-figure game off the bench.

Now 24-3 overall and 16-3 in the Sooner Athletic Conference, the Lady Bison took a one-game lead in the race for second place over SNU. The OBU women own all the tiebreakers as well, meaning SNU would have to finish a game ahead of the Lady Bison. Just three games remain in the regular season.