WEST LIBERTY, W.Va. – The West Liberty University women's basketball team battled high-powered Glenville State to the wire here Saturday afternoon only to come out on the short end of a 114-108 shootout at the ASRC.
    Coach Kyle Cooper's Hilltoppers (6-8, 2-6) traded leads with the Pioneers (10-4, 6-2) for much of the second half. A Morgan Brunner 3-pointer – her seventh bonus bomb of the game – cut the Glenville lead to 110-108 with just 32 seconds remaining and Cooper called timeout to set his defense.
    "At the pace Glenville plays, I didn't think they'd run the full 30 seconds off the shot clock," Cooper said. "If we could get a stop, I figured we would have enough time left for someone to make a play. We just didn't get the stop."
    Cooper's instincts proved correct as the Pioneers' Re'Shawna Stone curled into the paint on a dribble drive with 10 seconds still to play. Unfortunately for the Hilltoppers, Stone was able to split her two defenders and get to the rim for a layup that all but put the game out of reach, 112-108, with 8 seconds to play.
    West Liberty missed a 3-point try at the other end and fouled on the rebound, allowing Ty Armstrong to close out the scoring with a pair of free throws.
    "I told our girls after the game that there are no moral victories," Cooper said. "But if that same West Liberty team that came out on the floor today comes out for every game the rest of the way, we're going to start putting some wins together."
    The game see-sawed back and forth all afternoon with 9 ties and 7 lead changes.
    Neither team shot well in the first half, which ended with the Pioneers on top, 49-42, but things heated up considerably in the third quarter.
    West Liberty and Glenville combined for an eye-popping 75 points during that 10-minute span. Both teams shot better than 60 percent from the floor with the Hilltoppers - who scored 41 of the 75 points - hitting 5-of-7 3-point bombs and going 14-of-17 from the charity stripe.
    The hosts took their biggest lead of the second half, 78-72, on a driving layup by Audrey Tingle at 2:09 of the period but the Pioneers scored 11 of the last 16 points in the quarter to pull even, 83-83, heading into the fourth quarter.
    There were two ties and three lead changes in the first three minutes of the fourth quarter before Glenville went ahead to stay, 93-92, on a breakaway layup by Stone with 7:01 remaining. The Pioneers led by as many as nine points down the stretch before the Hilltoppers launched their last-minute surge.
    "It was a great basketball game between two teams with players making plays on both sides," Cooper said. "They just made a couple more plays than we did at the end."
    Brunner led all scorers with a game-high 33 points while Olivia Belknap and Taylor Johnson added 19 and 18 points, respectively. Tingle, WLU's 5-6 junior point guard, made a run at a triple-double with 16 points, a game-high 11 rebounds and a game-high 7 assists.
    Emily Stoller's 26 points led the way for Glenville State, which also got 23 points from Stone and 20 more from Taychaun Hubbard.
    The Lady Hilltoppers face another tough challenge on Wednesday when Fairmont State comes to the ASRC for a 5:30 p.m. tipoff.