MAYVILLE, N.D.\u00a0 (vcsu.edu)\u00a0\u2013 Valley City State held Mayville State to just four points in the fourth quarter Saturday afternoon as the Vikings rallied from a six-point deficit for a 65-59 road victory.<\/p>\n
The Vikings trailed 55-49 after three quarters, but outscored the Comets 16-4 over the final 10 minutes of the North Star Athletic Association conference opener, kick-starting their pursuit of the NSAA conference championship.<\/p>\n
“We knew coming into the game that this was going to be a possession battle,” said VCSU head coach Vanessa Keeler-Johnson<\/a>. “We were extremely flat coming out at halftime, but it says a lot about this group the way they battled down the stretch. I’m proud of our effort and execution in the fourth quarter.”<\/p>\n The Vikings were in control most of the first half and built a 39-34 lead at halftime, thanks in part to 19 first-half points by junior center Mackenzie Huber<\/a>. VCSU extended its lead to 43-34 with two quick buckets after halftime, but from there the third quarter belonged to the Comets. Mayville State ripped off a 14-2 run for a 48-45 lead, and outscored the Vikings 21-10 in the third quarteren route to its 55-49 advantage.<\/p>\n Mayville held a 57-49 lead before five straight points by VCSU senior Dierra Diegel<\/a> made it 57-54 and started to turn the momentum in the fourth quarter.\u00a0The Comets still led 59-54 with 5:47 remaining in the game, but the Vikings would finished with an 11-0 run to seal the come-from-behind victory. Kate Williams<\/a> scored to cut the deficit to 59-56, and then back-to-back buckets by Alli Vandal<\/a> gave the Vikings the lead for good at 60-59. Hannah Schlecht<\/a>‘s basket put VCSU up 62-59 with 48 seconds to go, and VCSU went 3-for-4 on free throws to ice the victory.<\/p>\n Valley City State improves to 4-5 overall and 1-0 in the NSAA. Mayville State drops to 3-5 overall and 0-1 in the conference.<\/p>\n Huber finished with 21 points to lead all scorers and just missed a double-double after pulling down nine rebounds. Four Vikings scored in double figures, including a 13-point, five-rebound and four-assist\u00a0performance by senior guard Hannah Schlecht<\/a>. Vandal and Kate Williams<\/a> each added 10 points as well.<\/p>\n Valley City State shot 42 percent from the field (24-58), 22 percent on 3’s (2-9) and 63 percent at the line (15-24). The Vikings committed just 13 turnovers in the game and pulled down 11 offensive rebounds, including three each by Huber and Schlecht.<\/p>\n Mayville State shot 35 percent overall (21-60), 15 percent on 3’s (4-27) and 81 percent on free throws (13-16). The Comets had 15 turnovers and 14 offensive rebounds, part of a 43-37 rebounding advantage. Joelle Ertl led Mayville with 20 points, while Kylee Heuring added 11. Mayville State entered the night averaging more than 11 made 3-pointers per game, but was held to just four baskets from deep on Saturday.<\/p>\n Up next: <\/strong>Valley City State has a 10-day break before hosting rival University of Jamestown for a non-conference game on Wednesday, Dec. 12. Game time is set for 6 p.m. at The Bubble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MAYVILLE, N.D.\u00a0 (vcsu.edu)\u00a0\u2013 Valley City State held Mayville State to just four points in the fourth quarter Saturday afternoon as the Vikings rallied from a six-point deficit for a 65-59 road victory. The Vikings trailed 55-49 after three quarters, but outscored the Comets 16-4 over the final 10 minutes of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24632,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=159141"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159162,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159141\/revisions\/159162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=159141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=159141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=159141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}