AURORA, Ill. - The Rockford University women's basketball team dropped a tough game on the road Tuesday night to the Aurora University Spartans. The Regents played a pretty well on the road and controlled multiple different facets of the game. Rockford forced a season-high 26 Spartan turnovers and recorded a season-high 14 steals. Despite doing a great job creating turnovers, Rockford was ultimately beaten by the three-ball. Aurora outscored Rockford 30-0 on three pointers as the Spartans got 7 three-point baskets from one player off the bench.
The opening minutes of the game saw each team take the lead as the Regents and Spartans traded baskets. With the game tied at 7-7, senior Katie Clark (Rock City, Ill.) gave Rockford its first lead of the evening just over 5 minutes into the game as she tipped in a missed three-point attempt. Clark kept Rockford in the game scoring the team's next 5 points before a Callie Rezin (Rockford, Ill.) layup tied the game for the final time at 16-16. The Spartans then closed the half on a 21-9 run including a trio of three-pointers to take a 12-point advantage into the break.
Aurora controlled the majority of the second half before Rockford made one final push down the stretch. The Spartans stretched their lead to a game-high 20 points with just under 10 minutes remaining forcing the Regents to call a timeout. After the timeout, Rockford promptly went on a 14-3 run over the next 4 minutes to cut the deficit down to only 9 points with well over 5 minutes remaining. However Rockford was never able to get much closer as the Aurora lead hovered around 10 points for the rest of the game en route to a 66-58 Spartan win.
Junior Diamond Williams (Carpentersville, Ill.) continues to play at a high level for the Regents. Williams once again led Rockford with a team-high 15 points and 7 rebounds. She is currently 10th in the NACC in scoring averaging 13.4 ppg and is sixth in the conference in field goal percentage shooting a sizzling 51.4% from the floor.
Senior Katie Clark scored all 14 of Rockford's bench points against Aurora. Clark also added 8 rebounds and blocked one shot.
Sophomore Mallorie Getzelman (Byron, Ill.) played a good all-around game for the Regents with 6 points on 2-of-5 shooting along with getting 5 rebounds and 4 steals.
The women's basketball team returns home on Saturday, December 13 against Wisconsin Lutheran College. Tip-off is set for 2:00 p.m. in the Seaver Center.
