Coyotes pull off second straight victory

It wasn’t pretty, but the University of South Dakota women’s basketball team was able to pick up their second straight win Saturday afternoon against the University of Oakland Golden Grizzlies in the DakotaDome.

The Coyotes were able to pull off the victory with a final score of 64-49.

“It was a grind-it-out win. It wasn’t pretty, but we got things done when we really needed to,” said Head Coach Amy Williams.

It was a close first half with neither team gaining more than a single digit lead. At one point in the half, the Coyotes were without a basket for over 10 minutes until Heidi Hoff came off the bench with a huge three pointer towards the end of the half. Despite the lack of scoring, USD took a two-point lead into the locker room with a score of 28-26.

Senior Tempestt Wilson scored 10 points in the first half and went 2-3 from outside the three-point line. Sophomore Nicole Seekamp put up nine points for the Coyotes and also had three assists. Sophomore Lisa Loeffler pulled down eight rebounds.

Sophomore Peyton Apsey scored six points in the half for the Golden Grizzlies. First-years Elona Popkey and Olivia Nash each added five points and four rebounds.

It was still a close game for much of the second half as neither team gained more than a three-point lead until the Coyotes went on a 7-0 run, and eventually closed the door on the Grizzlies, winning the game by 15 points.

Seekamp scored 15 points and dished out four assists. Junior Polly Harrington had seven rebounds.

“You can’t expect teams to just go away in the Summit League. They’re always going to fight back,” said Seekamp. “Once we stick the knife into teams, we can’t just let them come back.”

Wilson scored a total of 17 points and pulled down three rebounds in the win Saturday.

“This one (game) was a big challenge for us, but we just stuck with our game plan,” said Wilson. “They just played into our hands.”

The Coyotes will travel to Western Illinois Jan. 24 for their next game.