Mt. Carmel, Ill. – The Wabash Valley Lady Warriors won their78th straight Great Rivers Athletic Conference game on Monday night, beating Southwestern Illinois, 86-53.
But it was harder than it looked.
WVC, ranked 16th in the latest NJCAA poll, trailed at the end of the first quarter, and recovered only slightly in the second frame to lead by five points at halftime, 37-32.
Or as freshman guard Deja Davis put it: "That was an ugly first half."
It was not until the second half that the Warriors finally got untracked, outscoring Southwestern 49-20 in the final 20 minutes to improve to 10-2 overall, and 8-0 in the GRAC.
"We didn't have our best first half, but we bounced back in the second half," said coach Luke Scheidecker, with career coaching victory No. 101 under his belt. "We got a lot better, started talking and flying around in the second half."
Freshman Makira Webster said the Warriors were able to "lock in a little more after halftime. Being able to regroup and talk things over helped us a lot."
In the third quarter, WVC outscored Southwestern (1-8, 0-5) by a 25-11 margin, then added a similar spread (24-10) in the fourth period to account for the final.
Jazmyn Turner turned another double-double in the win, her seventh of the season. The sophomore scored 18 points but hauled down even more rebounds – 20, her season-best on the boards.
Je'Naiya Davis added 17 points. Webster and D'Nae Wilson had 13 points and 11, respectively.
Scheidecker, who recorded his 100th coaching victory on Saturday against Lincoln Trail, was asked to reflect on the milestone.
"I'm really fortunate to coach a lot of really good players who believed in me," he said. "I have good assistant coaches. I've been lucky."
Scheidecker, in his fourth season as a head coach, has a career mark of 101-7 (.935). He was at Shawnee for one season before coming to Wabash Valley in 2016. After two seasons here, he left to become an assistant at Indiana State, before returning in 2020.