Box Score  

KANSAS CITY – Behind an impressive all-around defensive effort, the IUPUI women’s basketball team bounced back from a loss on Thursday with a 47-33 win over Kansas City Saturday afternoon at the Swinney Recreation Center.

The win moved IUPUI to 17-10 overall and 10-4 in the Summit League, while the Kangaroos fell to 9-19 overall and 5-10 in the conference. The 17 wins for the Jags ties a Division-I era school record for wins in a season.

“After a tough performance at South Dakota, Kerah Nelson bounced back with a great performance and led us in the way she played,” head coach #Austin Parkinson said. “DeAirra Goss also did a lot of different things to contribute. For our kids to tie the school record for wins and have a winning conference road record is an important step for us.”

Both teams shot below 32.0-percent from the floor for the game, but defensively, the Jaguars managed to hold the second-leading scorer in the conference, Eilise O’Connor, nearly eight points below her season average on just 3-of-15 shooting from the field.

“As a team, our defense was really solid for 40 minutes today, which was key,” Parkinson said. “Our kids did a good job in guarding their best player and it was nice to see us respond like that on that end of the floor after Thursday’s game.”

Both teams combined to hit just six field goals in the first 10 minutes of action resulting in the Kangaroos owning a 10-8 lead at the midway point of the first half.

Despite its slow start offensively, the Jaguars managed to put together a 17-2 run over an 8:27 stretch to catapult in front, 25-12, with 1:11 to play. During the run, the Jags used an inside-out attack as Nicole Rogers buried two triples along with a Nevena Markovic three, while Nelson and Shawnece Teague combined for six more points in the lane.

In the final minute, however, Hailey Houser hit two baskets, including a lay-up with one second to go off an offensive rebound, to trim UMKC’s deficit to single digits heading into the half, 25-16.

After starting the first half 3-of-14 from the floor, IUPUI managed to hit 6-of-12 shots from the field in the final 10 minutes to finish the half shooting 34.6-percent (9-of-26).

Out of the half, IUPUI kept the Kangaroos scoreless for nearly seven minutes and went on an 8-0 run during that stretch to open up a 33-16 lead with a little more than 13 minutes to play.

Down the stretch, Kansas City cut their deficit to 10 points with 4:20 to play, but Katie Comello knocked down a huge three, her first of the game, on the next possession to snap a 7:47 scoreless drought and push the lead back to 13 points, 39-26.
From that point, the Jaguars cruised to a 47-33 victory.

Nelson led all scorers with 13 points, while Goss had seven points, a career-high eight rebounds and four assists. In just her third start of the season, Markovic played a season-high 30 minutes and contributed seven points, six boards, two blocks an assist and a steal.

IUPUI returns to action on Thursday, Feb. 28, when it hosts Oakland at The Jungle at 5 p.m. Thursday’s game against the Golden Grizzlies is the first game of a men’s and women’s doubleheader.