ST. CHARLES, Mo. ? The Indiana State Sycamores put three different scorers in double figures, but the Drake defense held ISU to just 38.1% shooting from the field as the Bulldogs took a hard-fought 65-59 victory in the quarterfinals of the State Farm Missouri Valley Conference Tournament at The Family Arena.
The Sycamores end their season with a 14-15 record while Drake moves on to the semifinals to take on Evansville with a record of 21-9.
ISU was able to find the open shooter for most of the night, but was able to connect on just 4-of-19 attempts from long range. The Sycamores got a pair of shots from behind the 3-point line from Leah Phillips, who finished the game with 10 points, while Kelsey Luna and Angela Phillips also each connected on a triple.
Senior Laura Rudolphi posted a game-high 18 points, by hitting 8-of-13 shots from the field, plus her only two free throw attempts of the game. She recorded four blocked shots to finish her career with 154 rejections, which is 10th-best in the history of the league.
Angela Phillips hit 6-of-19 shots from the field to score 15, breaking a string of four consecutive games in which she had scored over 20 points.
Also big for the Sycamores was the play of freshman Kelsie Cooley, who was 3-of-5 from the field and added a pair of free throws to score eight points.
Indiana State owned a pair of short-lived leads, the first of which came in the first half on Angela Phillips' 3-pointer with 5:55 left in the first half to give ISU a 19-18 advantage.
Drake's Lauren Dybing answered back with a jumper to put the Bulldogs up 20-19, but Phillips came right back with a transition jumper to regain a 21-20 lead. Drake scored each of the game's next four points to take a 24-21 lead and after Cooley scored to get ISU within a point, the half finished with Dybing jumper to make it 26-23.
The Bulldogs came out hot in the second half by scoring the first seven points to stretch their lead out to 33-23 with 17:09 remaining. After Drake's advantaged peaked at 12 points, ISU got a 3-pointer from Leah Phillips to make it 37-28 and then Rudolphi followed with a jumper to make it 37-30.
The Sycamore run continued with another 3-pointer by Leah Phillips to make it 37-33 with 11:29 to go.
