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INDIANAPOLIS – South Dakota State came into Friday night’s contest winning all nine meetings against the IUPUI women’s basketball team and behind a second-half surge, the Jackrabbits downed the Jaguars, 74-63 in Summit League action Friday evening at The Jungle.

The win improved SDSU’s early conference mark to 2-0, while the Jags fell to 1-1.

“Well you’re just not going to beat many teams giving up 74 points. Our goal tonight was 52 and they clearly blew that out of the water,” said head coach Austin Parkinson. “When you play at home, you can’t set the tone defensively the way we did at the beginning and in the second half and expect to win. Setting the tone defensively is something we have been pretty good at and for whatever reason tonight we didn’t have that intensity.”

The Jackrabbits hurt IUPUI at the free throw hitting 25-of-30 attempts, while the Jags hit just 15-of-20. SDSU only outscored IUPUI by three in second chance points, but it clearly dominated the battle of the boards, 41-29.

“For us we talked about outrebounding them or at least finishing even and they outrebounded us by 12,” Parkinson added. “We played some good disciplined defense in stretches and late in the clock they made some shots and then the ones they missed they chased down.”

IUPUI shot 46.2 percent (12-of-26) from the floor in the opening 20 minutes, but the Jackrabbits neutralized the Jags strong shooting by hitting 12-of-14 attempts from the charity stripe thanks in part to reaching the bonus with 12:23 mark to play in the first half.

The scoring pace slowed down after an up-and-down first eight minutes and with the score tied for the seventh time of the first half at 26-26, IUPUI pulled ahead using three points in the final four minutes from #Del’Niqua Bellamy# to help take a 31-30 lead into the break.

Out of halftime, South Dakota State hit four of its first five shots, including a trey from Sunnarborg, forcing Parkinson to use a timeout as the Jackrabbits jumped back in front, 39-36, with just over 17:00 to play.

After a Bellamy bucket brought IUPUI within one point, 42-41, at the 15:15 mark, a 9-0 run over the next 4:33 widened the Jackrabbits lead to double figures, 51-41.

IUPUI struggled to get its deficit below eight points until five straight points by Nevena Markovic spurred a 7-0 run closing the Jaguars within seven, 66-59, with 2:20 on the clock.

However, down the stretch the Jackrabbits connected on 8-of-10 free throws and on the other end IUPUI could not hit any three-pointers ultimately resulting in a 74-63 win for South Dakota State.

Katie Comello led IUPUI with 17 points, while Janna Eichelberger and Markovic also reached double digits with 13 points and 10 points, respectively. Markovic fell one rebound shy of her second double-double of the season with a game-high nine, while Emily Phillips dished out a career-best eight assists in defeat.

Sunnarborg led four double-figure SDSU scorers with 23 points on 9-of-15 shooting.

The Jags have five days off before hitting the road on Thursday, Dec. 8, for a contest against Southern Illinois. That game is scheduled for an 8 p.m. ET tip.