Women's Basketball | 12/2/2017 4:38:00 PM

Box Score

    WEST LIBERTY, W.Va. – The West Liberty University women's basketball team handed Notre Dame its first Mountain East Conference loss of the season Saturday afternoon in a 98-94 shootout at the ASRC.
    Coach Kyle Cooper's Hilltoppers (3-5, 2-2) led by as many as 12 points down the stretch before the Falcons (6-3, 3-1) mounted a late surge to narrow the final deficit.
    "We put a lot of really good numbers on this stat sheet," Cooper said during his post-game press conference, "and that's because we were fully engaged as a team for the majority of the game. As a young team that's still growing and maturing, we have to be a team that cares about every possession and we did a much better job with that today."
    West Liberty had five players score in double figures, led by Marissa Brown's 26 points and 11 rebounds, but the 6-3 junior post had plenty of support.
    Senior guard McKenna Shives drained six 3-pointers in the first half to help WLU get off to a fast start and finished with 21 points while Brandi Beader made a run at a double-double with 19 points, 9 rebounds and 5 assists.
    Not to be outdone, Olivia Belknap came up big off the bench with 13 points and Johnie Olkosky checked off a lot of boxes with 10 points, 7 assists, 5 rebounds and 5 steals.
    "Now that I'm older, I'm more able to appreciate the growth we're seeing from our younger players," Shives said, with a spot of blood trickling from her nose courtesy of an inadvertent elbow.
     "I'm so proud of what everybody brings to the table, from Olivia coming in and giving us a big lift off the bench to Marissa being so dominant in the paint and Brandi and Johnie doing a little bit of everything, we've shown we can be a very good team."
    Trailing 43-42 at intermission, West Liberty opened the second half with a 12-2 run and while Notre Dame mounted several comeback efforts, the Hilltoppers never trailed again.
    The Falcons trimmed to deficit to a single bucket, 73-71, on a driving layup by Seina Adachi with 6:24 left in the fourth quarter but the Hilltoppers responded.
    Olkosky knocked down a 3-pointer, Beader went coast-to-coast with a steal and Belknap followed with a dagger of a 3-pointer to restore the double-digit margin, 81-71, at the 5-minute media timeout and the game was gone.
    Kim Cook and Adachi paced four double-figure scorers for Notre Dame with 20 and 19 points, respectively.
    The WLU women hit the road on Wednesday for a 5:30 p.m. game at Shepherd.