BY DREW BILODEAU, SPECIAL WRITER
The Bellarmine women’s basketball team defeated the University of Missouri-St. Louis by a score of 68-47 after a slow start. Rebounding and bench play dug the Knights out of their early hole.
The Knights were able to snag 42 rebounds, while the Tritons only pulled down 26. Brooke Valentine came off the bench and grabbed 13 rebounds, more than double anyone else.
“She’s (Valentine) always been one of our best rebounders. We can always depend on her to come in and get the big rebounds and hard rebounds,” Kelsey Adwell said.
Bellarmine head coach Chancellor Dugan was also pleased with Valentine’s play,
“She had 13 boards in 18 minutes. That’s working,” Dugan said. “I mean she’s five 11 on a good day. I mean, she just works so hard.”
The Knights’ bench was a big factor in Bellarmine’s victory, providing 38 of their 68 points. After the Tritons started the game with a 6-0 run, Dugan made some substitutions. Bellarmine took the lead with four minutes left in the first quarter.
“Sometimes when you’re a starter, you just want to feel out and feel what’s happening. You can’t do that, you know?” Dugan said. “You got to go out and you got to play hard. [The bench players] sitting on the bench watching that got them motivated.”
Three of the top four scorers, and the top three rebounders for the Knights were bench players. Junior guard Destony Curry echoed Dugan’s sentiments on the Knights’ bench play.
“It was our bench, all our bench. They came in and gave us lots of energy that we didn’t have at first to start off with. That’s what helped us,” Curry said.
The Knights were not selfish with the ball, as 13 different players scored with seven of them contributing five or more points. Curry and Adwell led the way with 11 each.
While the offense was efficient, the defense held its own. Bellarmine held the Tritons’ leading scorer, Kelly Kunkel to only four points. They also managed to force UMSL into a whopping 23 turnovers.
UMSL head coach Katie Vaughn said she was frustrated with her team’s turnovers.
“The way Bellarmine plays, it can change so quickly,” Vaughn said. “They play fast, they capitalize off your mistakes. So you can’t make mistakes. You can’t take bad shots. You can’t turn the ball over.”