Simpson falls at home to Wartburg

INDIANOLA, Iowa -- The Simpson women's basketball team dropped a hard-fought 88-73 contest to Wartburg on Thursday, which snapped a six game winning streak.

Simpson (16-4, 8-3 American Rivers) went nearly 34 minutes of game action without ever having the lead before the squad went up by one after a Janey Botkins' 3-pointer made it 63-62. Two made free throws by Rachel Freland extended the lead to three, but Simpson could never add to it after the visitors went on a 15-0 run to put the game at bay.

The Knights (18-3, 11-1 A-R-C) showed why they are the top scoring defense in the conference after holding Simpson scoreless for the opening three minutes and had a 10-0 lead.

Wartburg used its size advantage and drove to the basket on the majority of its plays and it worked, the team racked up 29 free throw attempts and made 25 of them for 86.2 percent. On the other side, Simpson could only draw six free throws and made four of them.

The Storm relied heavily on their 3-point shooting and scored all 15 of their first quarter points from behind the arc. Alaira Tyus made the first basket inside the arc for Simpson. The Storm broke away from the trend in the second quarter and scored all 19 points without making a triple.

Cameron Kincaid led all scorers with 13 points at the halfway mark and finished the game with 15. Kincaid went 3 of 4 from deep and 6 of 11 from the floor. Clair Johnson added nine points, five rebounds and three assists.

For the visitors, Emma Gerdes had 18 points, Tori Hazard had 16, Adrienne Boettger had 11 and 11 rebounds.

GAME NOTES

All 11 players who saw game action for the Storm tallied a point and all but two had a rebound. Simpson had its best performance from behind the arc since the team shot 54.1 percent when they played at Dubuque on Jan. 5.

UP NEXT

After facing the top-seeded team in the A-R-C, Simpson will face second-place Loras on Saturday. The game is slated to begin at 2:00 p.m.