Balanced attack, dominant first quarter propel Pride to Heart opening win over Grand View

DUBUQUE, Iowa - In a game that was moved to become the Clarke University women's basketball team's conference opener to avoid CU's finals week, the Pride were able to run away with a 90-69 victory over Grand View University on Tuesday night.

The Pride scored over a third of their points in the opening frame as they ended the opening 10 minutes with a 30-10 lead behind 13-for-18 (72.2%) shooting from the field and 4-for-7 (57.1%) shooting from three while holding the Vikings to just 4-of-15 (26.7%) shooting.

With a 13-9 lead following a Grand View make at 5:53, Clarke would go on to finish the quarter on a 17-1 run as the Vikings would miss their final seven shots from the field while turning the ball over twice in that span while the Pride would go seven for their last nine in the quarter including a buzzer beating runner from Skylar Culbertson and eight of the final 10 points in the last 1:33 of the quarter scored by Nicole McDermott.

"Grand View is a scary team, they could shoot the three very well but we were able to run them off of the three point line in the first," head coach Courtney Boyd said. "Stretching that lead out a little bit gave us a few more options going into the second quarter so we could look at a few different things offensively."

Clarke balanced out the minutes and the offensive opportunities with no member of the Pride playing more than Culbertson's 29 minutes and nobody taking more than Emma Kelchen's 10 shots as Kelchen and Culbertson tied for the team-high with 15 points as Culbertson's 15 comes as a career-high on 6-of-7 (85.7%) shooting from the field and 3-of-4 (75%) shooting from three point range. Culbertson added six rebounds and six assists to lead CU in both categories as Kelchen provided four rebounds and three assists.

"Our smaller guards have been the players teams have doubled off of to guard our posts," Boyd said. "So if our smaller guards are a threat, especially Sky, then it puts us in a really good position to play the inside outside game."

McDermott finished with 14 points, six assists, five rebounds, and two steals as all of her scoring came in the first half while everyone member of the Pride who played 15 or more minutes finished with a make from the field and three or more points.

That supporting scoring was led by a pair of nine-point performances from Taylor Haase and Madison Lindauer as Lindauer was able to finally break through from three point range after getting off to a slower start than expected as she went 3-for-6 from deep in 15 minutes.

Giana Michels and Izzie Peterson provided seven and six points off the bench respectively as Michels continues to work her way back into form coming off of her offseason surgery as she played 27 minutes while adding four rebounds and four assists.

"That's the best part of this team," Boyd said. "We might not have a ton of player of the week performances but that's not what it's about. It's harder to guard six, seven, eight people than it is to guard one or two so spreading the scoring out is beneficial for us."

Grand View's Ella Larson finished with a game-high 33 points on 10-of-15 (66.7%) shooting from the field and a perfect 11-for-11 from the free throw line but she was only supported by 14 from Isabel Gscheidle with no other Vikings player finishing with more than five.

Clarke women's basketball will hit a mini Thanksgiving break before getting back to work quickly for their originally Heart of America Athletic Conference opener against No. 6 Central Methodist University on Saturday in Fayette, Mo. for a 2:00 p.m. CT start.