SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Oral Roberts avenged a pair of regular season losses on Sunday, as they shot their way to a 92-69 win over USD in the Summit League quarterfinals.
The Golden Eagles (12-18) will now play in the Summit League semifinals on Monday, against SDSU at 12:30 p.m.
ORU is the second leading offense in the conference and they showed that Sunday. The Golden Eagles shot higher than 50% in the win.
The Oral Robert lead was down to one in the third, but that wouldn’t last long.
The Golden Eagles responded with a run of their own, fueled by Ruthie Udoumoh who posted ten points in the period alone.
The third quarter was certainly the best scoring output for USD on Sunday, but unfortunately for the Yotes, it was Oral Roberts as well, until the fourth.
The Golden Eagles poured it on in the fourth. They posted 30 points as they pulled away for the 23 point victory.
“Five years in-a-row this team has been the best defense in the league and they’ve won a lot of games because of it,” head coach Kayla Karius said. “Now, we need to find people who are going to defend going forward and getting better at that.”
Hannah Cooper led the way for Oral Roberts. She posted 24 points. Udoumoh added 19, while Tirzah Moore collected 13.
The Coyotes were led by Grace Larkins. She tallied a team high 19 points in the loss.
“The most important thing that we got today was the experience. Four players, that we had active have been on the floor that we played on tonight,” Karius said. “It’s just one more thing that we can add to the list that this group got to do together.”
USD was plagued by the turnover bug. They had 21 turnovers in the loss, including nine in the final frame.
“They were able to force a lot of turnovers. We were able to figure it out there at the end, but then we were just trading baskets with them,” USD guard Macy Guebert said.
The Coyotes close the season with a 14-16 record.
