It was a good night for the T-Bird Women’s Basketball team as they showed resiliency despite playing from behind most of the night. From the tip-off, it looked like the visiting Orediggers were going to run away, leading 30-11 with 9:00 left in the first half. As a team, Montana Tech was having a stellar performance and the T-Birds couldn’t get the defensive stops that they needed to hold the Orediggers off. With plenty of opportunities to score in the period, the visitors were shooting the lights out at 60.6%. Down in the paint, post Lindsie Wilson was working hard and finishing well. She was 6 for 7 from the field with 13 points in the first half. For the T-Birds, it was Robin Swain again who stepped up as the captain of the team to keep Cascade in the game with 16 points.

The Orediggers looked to get right back into it for the second half, but began to struggle offensively. The T-Birds sat back in a zone, and the visitors shots stopped falling and Maya Gross and Amy Russell were there to clean it up. Both grabbed double digit nights on the glass - Gross with 12 and Russell with 10.

Slowly but surely, the T-birds chipped away at the lead. At one point in the game the Orediggers lead was as much as 19 points, but by the 14 minute mark, the T-Birds had eliminated the lead and were only down by 4 points. Defensively, they held the Orediggers to score only 7 points in the first 5 minutes of the half. On the offensive end, Kristina Schumacher shook off a rough first half and dropped 23 points and gave the T-birds the lead at 71-70 with 3 minutes left in regulation. From the 3 minute mark, the game turned into a title bout, with the lead changing 5 times.

With 1:11 minutes to go in regulation, Tech’s Brittanie Toone toed the line and iced both free throws to put the visitors up 75-74. Coming back down the court for the T-Birds, there was only one person that Coach Murphy wanted to have the ball: Kristina Schumacher. The T-birds ran the shot-clock down and Schumacher was clutch with a step-back jumper at the elbow to put T-birds up 76-75 with 34.1 seconds to go. Montana tried to get the lead back, but in desperation their shots were not falling. The T-birds scored again off free throws and their lead was extended to 3. In one last attempt to tie the game, the Orediggers ran a set play for their leading point scorer Jessie DePell, but her 3-point attempt went short and the Orediggers had to resort to fouling. In the end, Maya Gross sealed the game, and put the lead out of reach for the visitors with two free throws.

For the T-Birds, Schumacher was just shy of her nation leading average with 25 points, and Swain had another solid game with 24 pts. For the visitors, Wilson had a great game down low, coming up with the only double-double of the match - finishing with 22 points and 11 rebounds.

The Orediggers will remain on the road and travel to face Seattle University tomorrow night. The next time the T-Birds will see action is this Friday versus Kwantlen University from Canada. Tip off is at 5.30 at the Thunderdome.