Photo by Jake McNeill Southwest Minnesota State guard Hannah Parsley (4) attempts a layup during the third quarter of a womens basketball game against Minot State on Friday night in Marshall. The Mustangs defeated the Beavers by a final score of 78-61.

MARSHALL — After a low-scoring first half between the Southwest Minnesota State and Minot State womens basketball teams, Hannah Parsley sparked a third-quarter run and Sam Wall came alive in the fourth quarter to set a new career-high in 3-pointers to give the Mustangs a 78-61 win over the Beavers in their penultimate regular-season home game on Friday night.

The win brings SMSU up to 15-6 on the season, putting them in a three-way tie for third place in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference with UMary and Concordia-St. Paul. Second-place Northern State also sits just one game ahead of the Mustangs in second place.

The teams played a competitive, back-and-forth first half consisting of 10 lead changes. The Mustangs came out of the locker room holding a 30-26 lead and Maya Aguilar quickly cut the deficit to 2 points for the Beavers.

“We talked at halftime, defensively we thought we were pretty good,” SMSU head coach Tom Webb said of his team’s first-half performance, noting that they held Minot State’s offense down and that he liked his team’s effort and shot selection, though they hadn’t been falling.

“It’s not like you have to get too worked up, just continue to be who you are, continue to take those shots, continue to attack and things will eventually fall. If they don’t you’ve got to play more defense.”

The complexion of the game changed once Hannah Parsley took control in the third quarter. After scoring 5 first-half points, the senior guard scored 11 points in the third quarter to shift all momentum toward SMSU. During one stretch beginning just under halfway through the quarter, Parsley scored 9 points on five possessions to give SMSU a 50-38 lead. She went on to finish the night with 16 points on 6 of 8 shooting from the field and 2 of 3 shooting from beyond the arc. The Beavers never came any closer than 7 points for the remainder of the game.

“We said, ‘Let’s just attack the zone more than being pass, pass, pass,'” Webb said. “We got the ball inside the post, got a little bit more aggressive that way, but we also attacked from the corners. Hannah got downhill one time and then we got downhill and kicked it to Hannah in the corner. We were just much more aggressive.”

Parsley also helped the Mustangs spread the ball around. She tied Stoltzman with a game-high five assists and turned it over just once.

If Parsley set up the Mustangs’ win in the third quarter, Sam Wall played the role of the closer in the fourth. The senior guard came into the game 19 3-pointers back of her former teammate Jenna Borchers for the career record for makes from beyond the arc.

“They’re [Borchers and Wall] both very good players… We’ve been very blessed to have them here for that long and as a coach, you’re just very thankful,” Webb said. “They’ve put in a lot of work, they shoot a lot of shots and there’s a reason that they’re good. They work at it. It’s just a testament to their work ethic, their competitiveness and their desire to be really good.”

She had six first-half points and, after hitting one 3-pointer in the first quarter, the senior guard hit four 3-pointers in the span of five offensive possessions in the fourth to give SMSU a 69-52 lead with 5:38 to play in the game.

“It was just the flow of the game. I wasn’t even thinking, we were just playing our game and we finally got to the pace where we wanted to be and I was just in the right place at the right time,’ Wall said.

Wall finished the night with a game-high 21 points on 7 of 16 shooting from long range. The big night puts her one 3-pointer away from tying SMSU’s single-season record of 77 3-pointers that she set last year and leaves her 12 makes back of tying Borchers’ mark of 251.

“I honestly don’t pay attention to records and things like that, but it’s also really exciting,” Wall said. “It goes to show the amount of work that our team puts in and I’m grateful that I’m able to be in this position with my teammates that give me the ball. If they weren’t able to do that, then I wouldn’t be able to take the shots.”

SMSU ran away with an 81-42 win in its last meeting against the Beavers, a difference Webb attributed to a mental adjustment on Minot State’s part.

“[Minot State] beat [Minnesota] Duluth last week. They’re a young team and… they’re growing in their confidence,” Webb said. “They’ve played a lot of conference games, now they know what it’s all about. They probably saw our pace a little bit, understood our pace more, and it’s there. They’re a good team, they really are. They can take care of business when they need to and we were fortunate enough to make some shots tonight.”

It was a slow, defensive grind for the first period of the game. While the Mustangs have been known for their uptempo play this season, it was Minot controlling the pace of play early. The teams went scoreless for over a minute before Bri Stoltzman grabbed a rebound and went coast-to-coast for the game’s opening points. Sydney Gustavsson answered with a layup of her own to tie the game and, after another two scoreless minutes, Maya Aguilar gave Minot a 4-2 lead with a midrange jumper.

Aguilar finished the night as the Beavers’ leading scorer with 16 points on 7 of 8 shooting from the field while also making each of her two free throws. Gustavsson also finished in double-figures with 16 points.

The lead was short-lived as Wall quickly answered with a corner 3 to put the Mustangs back on top. From there, however, the Mustangs and Beavers combined for a nearly four-minute scoring drought. Blandin finally ended the drought off an assist from Wall with a 3-pointer from the top of the key and Elizabeth Wagner kept the momentum going with a layup off a Madison Gehloff dump-in on the next play for a 10-5 SMSU lead.

Aguilar and Lorelei McIver each came up with a pair of points, McIver’s coming after she stole the ball and earned a pair of free throws, to cut SMSU’s lead to 1 point. Parsley came up with a corner 3 in the final minute but Jaime Skeggs responded with a pair of free throws after being fouled in the bonus to cut SMSU’s lead to 13-11 after the first quarter.

“Missed shots and then what they’d come down and run flex and they’d just swing it, swing it, swing it, swing it and just grind it offensively to slow that pace down,” Webb said of Minot State’s early attack. “We might come down and if we take a quick shot, then they’re going back and we’re going back down and playing defense again. If shots go, then you can kind of get in that flow a little bit and then they have to do more press or play a little more our style, and early we just couldn’t get it to go.”

Webb added that he was proud of the way his team defended and rebounded to maintain the lead even when they weren’t controlling the tempo. As a group, SMSU had seven offensive rebounds in the first half compared to three for Minot State. SMSU finished the game with a 38-30 advantage on the glass, led by seven rebounds from Parsley and another six each from Stoltzman and Madison Gehloff. Parsley’s four offensive boards were also a game-high. Gustavsson led Minot with five rebounds, all defensive.

The second period started much the same as the first with the two teams going scoreless for the first two minutes. From there, however, Gustavsson and McIver combined for 3 points to give Minot State a 14-13 lead with 7:10 remaining in the first half, their first lead since the first four minutes of the first quarter. McIver missed the second of its two free throws and, after SMSU grabbed the defensive rebound, Cassidy King forced a tie-up to give the Beavers the ball back. Still, Minot whiffed on the go-ahead layup and Stoltzman drove to the rim to give SMSU the lead back.

Skeggs and Wall traded 3s and after another two ties and two lead changes, Stoltzman jumped a passing lane to tip a ball loose at half-court. She jostled her way past King, drew a foul and knocked down the and-1 to give SMSU the lead. She hit another pair of free throws after an offensive rebound on the next possession to put SMSU up 27-23 with a minute remaining in the first half. The teams traded baskets from there, allowing SMSU to carry a 30-26 lead into the locker room.

SMSU finished the night with just nine turnovers while forcing the Beavers to commit 16. Stoltzman and Brynn Busse recorded three and two steals respectively while Lorelei McIver had another three for Minot.

With one game left in the regular season, SMSU improves to 17-10 with the win. The Mustangs will host Minnesota State Moorhead — a team that they defeated 74-61 in their last matchup in Moorhead — for their final regular-season game today at 3:30 p.m. The top four seeds receive a first-round bye in the NSIC tournament, so the Mustangs need a win to clinch their spot in Sioux Falls, S.D. for the NSIC quarterfinals. Otherwise, the first round of the tournament’s games will be held on Wednesday at the home site of the high seed. Still, Webb said the focus for now is to just focus on sending off the seniors — Wall, Parsley, Gehloff and Sarah Conlon — on a high note.

“You want to play for your seniors. You want to take care of them, you want to make sure that you continue to play hard. I think for us, we’ve just got to keep working at it,” Webb said. “We’ve talked about it for over a month now, we’re kind of in playoff basketball. That’s really what we’ve been in because we’ve been in a tight race for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 [seeds in the NSIC standings]. Whatever those things are, we’ve just got to continue to go out and compete like we did tonight.”