ST. LOUIS—On Thursday night, the Bellarmine University women's basketball team turned in possibly its best performance of the year, but in today's Great Lakes Valley Conference game they had the tables turned on them as Missouri-St. Louis had one of its best efforts of the year, and the host Tritons rolled to an 80-59 victory in the Mark Twain Building.

Missouri St.-Louis got hot in the second period and turned a tight game into a blowout as the Tritons shot a blistering 63.3 percent—including 71.4 percent from the 3-point line—after halftime.   For the game, UMSL shot it at a 55.4 percent clip while the Knights made just 21 of 54 for 38.9 percent.  Compounding the problem for the Knights was a minus-20 rebounding margin as UMSL outrebounded BU 42-22.

"We just had no effort the whole game," said Bellarmine Head Coach Chancellor Dugan.  "We had two rebounds the first 10 minutes of the game; we just weren't blocking out. We weren't doing anything we did the other night," she added.  "We're not a team that can just go out and play. We've got to play with emotion.  We've got to put our hard hat on and go to work.  We're a blue collar team, and we just did not bring that effort tonight."

The game's first 18 minutes was tightly contested as the biggest lead over that span was a three point advantage for the Knights.  However, the Tritons closed the half on a 6-1 run to take a 32-26 lead into halftime.

After the break, UMSL continued their spurt, eventually making the scoring run 16-3 as they took a 45-29 lead at the 16:09 mark.  The Tritons would go on to build their lead to as many as 26 in the second period before settling for the 21-point victory margin.

A bright spot for the Knights was the play of freshman Raven Merriweather, who led the Knights with 17 points on six of 10 shooting.  Senior Morgan Clemons added 10 points and hauled in eight rebounds for Bellarmine.

The Tritons were led by Alexis Lawrence who hit 10 of 16 shots including seven of 11 3-pointers to finish with 27 points. 

The Knights move to 12-11 on the season and fall one game under .500 in league play at 7-8.  Missouri-St. Louis also moved to 12-11, but is one game over .500 at 8-7.

Bellarmine returns home on Thursday to host the St. Joseph's Puma's at 5:45 p.m.

BOX SCORE (HTM)