BUCKHANNON, W. Va. – Freshman guard Megan Beachy scored 20 of her career-high 27 points in the third quarter Monday night, leading the Urbana University women’s hoops team to an 89-78 conference road win at West Virginia Wesleyan.
UU moves to 4-5 overall and captures its third straight league win to move to 3-2 against the Mountain East Conference. UU continues league play when plays at Glenville State on Wednesday night.
The UU men’s team fell in the nightcap, 77-59. The loss was the eighth straight for the Blue Knights (1-9, 0-5).
Beachy, who missed the previous two games due to injury, entered the second half with just two points as the Blue Knights trailed 31-30 at the break.
But the 5-foot-8 sharpshooter came out of the locker room with a quick five points to tie the game at 35-35, and then took over from there. She finished 9 of 18 from the field and 4 of 6 from three-point range, while going a perfect 5 of 5 at the free-throw line.
Sophomore guard Danie Shafer entered the contest averaging 21.5 points against MEC foes, and continued that trend with 22 points. Shafer also became the first Blue Knight with a double-double this season with a career-high 10 rebounds.
The Blue Knights overcame a sluggish first half and finished 44.1 percent from the floor with a season-high 30 made field goals on a season-high 20 assists. UU also tied its best three-point shooting performance of the season with 11 treys on 21 attempts.
Sophomore forward Jazmyn Haley filled the stat sheet with 12 points, five steals, four boards and three assists in 23 minutes off the bench. Sophomore guard Stefanie Davis also chipped in with six points and six assists.
After a full two weeks without game action, UU came out slow and fell behind 12-2 at the start. But the Blue Knights stayed close in a sloppy first half, which featured a combined 26 turnovers between the two teams.
For the game, WVWC (1-7, 0-5) turned it over 22 times, tied for the most turnovers by a UU opponent through nine games.
An Erin Morrow layup with 5 minutes left in the opening frame made it 14-9, as the Blue Knights dropped their only quarter in the contest by a score of 18-13.
UU picked up two key 3-pointers in the second stanza, including a trey from redshirt freshman Ariana Harper with 6:57 left in the half to make it 19-18 WVWC. Then, Shafer drained a three right before the halftime buzzer sounded to get UU back within a point.
After Beachy connected on back-to-back field goals, Shafer then gave UU its first lead of the matchup with a pair of free throws to make it 37-35 Blue Knights at the 8:27 mark in the third.
The teams exchanged the lead twice more over the next few minutes, until UU rattled off an 8-0 run over 47 seconds to gain a 53-45 advantage with 4:19 left in the third quarter.
UU held on the rest of the way and built its largest lead of 15 points when it went ahead 82-67 with 4:32 left in the game.
An 8-0 Bobcat run cut the UU lead down to seven, but Beachy put a stop to that with a pair of free throws. Beachy then hit a dagger three with just over a minute left to put UU back ahead by 12 points.
Monday night’s win was the first victory over West Virginia Wesleyan for the Blue Knights in two years.
