Women’s basketball team loses to Simpson, 92-56, in first round of North Central Tournament

The Olivet College women's basketball team dropped a 92-56 decision to Simpson (Iowa) College today in a first round game of the North Central College/Holiday Inn Select Tip-off Tournament at Gregory Arena in Naperville, Illinois. With the loss, Olivet will play Blackburn (Ill.) College in the consolation game tomorrow afternoon at noon CT. Blackburn fell to the host Cardinals, 70-68, in the other first round game.

In the first half, Simpson had an eight-point lead, 11-3, with just under 13 minutes left. Olivet came back with a 10-2 run to cut its deficit to two points, 15-13, at the 9:28 mark. The Storm came back with two 3-pointers and three layups to push their lead back to double digits, where it would stay for the rest of the game. Simpson led 46-24 at halftime. The Storm stretched their lead to as many as 40 points with 7:19 remaining in the game.

Freshman Mellissa Bageris (Milford) came off the bench to score a team-high 11 points, including 7-of-8 shooting from the charity stripe. She also grabbed a game-high seven rebounds. Senior Gabrielle Federau (Okemos) and junior Kaitlin Oleksyn (Kalamazoo/Parchment) each scored eight points.

For Simpson, Stacey Schutjer led all scorers with 21 points.

Following tomorrow's game, Olivet returns to Michigan and will travel to play Cornerstone University Tuesday, Nov. 24 at 7 p.m.