Pride drop road matchup in Heart to Peru State
PERU, Neb - Playing their final regular season game in the month of November, the Clarke University women's basketball team dropped a 73-64 game to Peru State College on the road on Saturday afternoon.
A tight game for a majority of the 40 minutes, the Pride and Bobcats exchanged the lead 11 times and saw the score tied 15 times as the score was knotted at 21-21 after a quarter, PSC held a four-point lead at the half, and CU led by three points after three quarters before a 29-17 fourth carried the home team to victory.
The major turning point in the game came with about four minutes remaining in the fourth when Peru State's Dakota Haner hit a three pointer to break a 56-56 tie that would inevitably start a 14-0 run over about a three-minute stretch for a 70-56 lead with just under 90 seconds remaining in the game.
During that stretch, Clarke would go 0-for-5 from the field and committed two turnovers as the points off of turnovers played a large role by the end of the game where the Bobcats scored 21 points off of the 23 CU turnovers, but the Pride only produced nine points off of 17 PSC turnovers.
For the third time out of the last four games, Pride junior Josie Potts produced a career-high in points, this time tying her mark set two games ago with a game-high tying 18 points on 6-of-11 (54.5%) shooting from the field while adding six rebounds, three assists, and two steals.
Peru State's Erison Vonderschmidt matched Potts with 18 of her own to also add a game-high 13 rebounds for a double-double along with her three assists, two steals, and blocked shot over 36 minutes played.
Clarke's two other double figure scoring performances came from Zoe Kennedy and Reese Ryan with Kennedy scoring 14 points while adding three rebounds, four assists, four steals, and three blocked shots, but also committed nine of the team's 23 turnovers then Ryan produced a 10-point, five-rebound, one-block game in 24 minutes before fouling out.
Pride women's basketball will play an exhibition game on Monday, Nov. 24 in Fayette, Iowa against Upper Iowa University for a 2:00 p.m. CT tip before taking the rest of Thanksgiving Week off, when they will return to Heart of America Athletic Conference play on Dec. 3 at Graceland.