Box Score
MUSKOGEE, Okla. – Maci Merket and Jada Riley scored 16 points apiece while Kambrey Blakey and Kendrick Clark put in 15 each as No. 5 Wayland Baptist rallied from behind to post a 79-59 Sooner Athletic Conference win over Bacone College here Saturday afternoon.
Wayland scored 20 unanswered points spanning the third and fourth quarter to take control of the game which saw the Flying Queens trailing most of the first 25 minutes.
"You always know it's going to be a battle against Bacone," Wayland coach Alesha Ellis said of the Lady Warriors, who are third in the NAIA in steals and fourth in rebounds. "They make you play fast. They press the whole time and are very active and very athletic. They go 100 percent the whole time."
The win came on the heels of back-to-back losses for the Flying Queens (10-2, 4-1 SAC), who after falling to No. 3 Campbellsville, Ky., in Hawaii before Christmas bowed to No. 19 John Brown in Arkansas on Thursday, 74-62.
Against Bacone (10-4, 2-3), which had won its last three games after a three-point loss to No. 8 Oklahoma City, Wayland trailed by as many as seven points and was down 34-30 at halftime before outscoring the Lady Warriors in the third quarter, 30-12, to take control.
"Our girls were a little bit rattled early in the game, but once they calmed down and started moving the ball and hitting shots they were able to settle in," Ellis said. "The girls kept their composure well."
The Flying Queens scored 20 unanswered points over the final 2½ minutes of the third quarter and the first minute of the fourth, expanding a 48-46 lead to 66-46. WBU's largest lead was 25 points.
"We came back from that Christmas break and haven't been ourselves. The second half today we started looking more like ourselves," Ellis said. "We started playing a zone and that helped us."
With inside starters Nina Sato and Deborah VanDijk in foul trouble, Clark and Blakey came in and sparked the Flying Queens with more of a perimeter offense.
"Kambrey and Kendrick came off the bench and played really well," Ellis said. "We went with quicker, smaller players and that seemed to help against them. We were able to get to the rim better in the second half."
Wayland also stepped up its defense in the second half, holding Bacone to just 28 percent shooting (9-of-32), including 1-of-9 from 3-point range. The Lady Warriors hit just 15-of-28 (54 percent) of their free throws, where the Flying Queens also struggled by going 15-of-25 (60 percent). WBU made 6-of-17 3s (35 percent) and shot 44 percent overall from the field.
"We have to get back in the groove with our shooting," Ellis said.
The 15 points were a career-high for Blakey, eclipsing the first-year transfer's previous best of 10 in the season-opener.
Blakey and Merket pulled down eight rebounds each, while Riley had five along with five assists and four steals. Sato was credited with five blocks, half of the school-record 10 she tallied against Campbellsville.
Wayland committed 23 turnovers while Bacone had 29.
The Lady Warriors got 21 points from Cierra Miles and 17 from Alyssa Springs.
The Flying Queens play at home for the first time since Dec. 2 when they host University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma at 6 p.m. Thursday. USAO (11-2, 3-1), ranked the equivalent of 33rd in the NAIA, took a five-game winning streak into its game Saturday against Southwestern Christian. The Drovers' last loss was to then No. 1 Oklahoma City, 65-58, on Dec. 14.
