Dawson traveled to North Dakota once again to play another back-to-back pair of games for the second time within a week. On Monday night, the Lady Bucs matched up with league leading North Dakota State College of Science.
It was a close game throughout the first half, and the Bucs were behind by 3 points after the first quarter and then down 5 points at halftime. It was the third quarter that ended up being the difference in the game when the NDSCS Wildcats went on an 18-2 run and outscored the Bucs 29-9 overall in the quarter. The Bucs managed to trim the lead in the fourth quarter by outscoring NDSCS 21-16 but it was too little too late with the game ending in a score of 77-57 in favor of the Wildcats.
The Wildcats scored 34 points off turnovers in comparison to 17 from the Bucs and NDSCS made 26 points from the free throw line compared to 11 from Dawson. The Wildcats won every category that determines team success (turnovers, field goal percentage, personal fouls and rebounds). Dawson did manage to score more points in the paint and more points off the bench than NDSCS.
Shannon Burton led the Bucs starters in scoring with 14 points, 5 rebounds and 1 assist followed by Michelle Arens with 11 points who continued her hot shooting streak from behind the three-point line by shooting 50 percent for the game. Zariah Jenkins came off the bench and made an immediate impact by scoring 11 points and distributing 2 assists.
"Science is a very tough team to play against. They have very good players and Coach Masterson is doing a great job of preparing all of them," shared Dawson Coach Rich Mullin. "They are first in the conference for a reason, but I'm so confident in our ladies that I expect us to compete in every game regardless of the opponent. We played an extremely sloppy first half of basketball with very poor execution on both ends of the court and ended up down only 5 at halftime. Naturally we expected to clean things up in the
second half to bring home the win, but our opponents had other plans for us. I'm so proud of our ladies for continuing to push through adversity and it's exciting to witness them improving on a daily basis."