The SIU women’s basketball team (2-1) earned their second win of the season, this time over the SEMO Redhawks (2-3), 67-51 on Sunday. 

The Salukis were coming off a 17-day break between games due to COVID-19 and have now played back-to-back days, winning both matchups. 

(See More: Saluki women’s basketball player tests positive for COVID-19, team takes pause from next three games)

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Senior forward Gabby Walker said it was because the team didn’t give up or get tired down the stretch.

“It’s huge winning both games back-to-back, we talked a lot about it as a squad and we wanted to use these games kind of as a practice run for conference because we know we’re going to be playing games back to back,” Walker said. 

In their last game, the Salukis dominated in the fourth quarter, outscoring Austin Peay 21-3, and today outscored SEMO 20-8 in the last quarter. 

SIU Head coach Cindy Stein said she thought the team pulled away because they were smart late in the game. 

“I thought we were able to pull away because we made some pretty good decisions, we used the clock pretty good and we had good shot selection and rebounding. We held them to one shot and we got the boards,” Stein said. 

The Salukis outrebounded the Redhawks 49-33 in the game.

“Rebounding is always one of our key points, we always have to out rebound our opponents,” Walker said. 

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Leading the scoring for SIU was Walker with 17 points and junior guard Peyton Mccalister added 15 points on five 3-pointers. Senior guard Makenzie Silvey also added 14 points. 

For the Redhawks, Taelour Pruitt led the scoring with 19 points, Tesia Thompson scored 13 points but was held to 4-for-20 from the field. 

Senior forward Abby Brockmeyer started the game scoring almost two minutes into the game. The Redhawks responded immediately tying the game at two on a Tesia Thompson layup. 

The Salukis were leading six to two halfway through the first quarter. 

Mccallister hit her first 3-pointer of the game to give the Salukis a 12-8 lead, but the Redhawks responded with four points to tie up the game after one. 

Silvey started the second quarters scoring and the teams were going back and forth with SEMO taking their only lead of the game at 24-23 on free throws from Thompson with 3:57 left in the half. 

The Salukis closed out the half on a 10-2 run behind two 3-pointers from Mccallister and one from Silvey along with a pair of free throws from Walker, to give the Salukis a 34-26 halftime lead. 

The third quarter was back and forth with the Redhawks cutting the lead to as close as two in the final minute of the quarter at 45-43. Mackenzie Silvey responded well with two free throws to extend the lead to four points after three quarters. 

SIU ran away with it in the fourth quarter with them opening the quarter on a 13-0 run and totally putting the game out of reach.

Mccallister and Brockmeyer opened up the scoring in the final quarter to extend the lead to 52-43. After a three minute span of no points for either team Walker scored five straight points and gave the Salukis a 57-43 lead. 

A 3-pointer from freshman guard Quierra Love extended the lead to 60-43 with 3:46 left. 

The Redhawks scored their first points of the final quarter with 3:30 left in the game but weren’t able to make it a close game again. 

The final score was 67-51 after a strong fourth quarter by the Salukis for the second straight day. 

SIU will next play an away game against University of Tennessee-Martin on Dec. 15 at 5 p.m.

Sports reporter Ryan Scott can be reached at [email protected] or on twitter @RyanscottDE. 

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