ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Michigan Tech women’s basketball team closed the Thanksgiving weekend with an 83-76 road victory at Concordia St. Paul Saturday evening. The Huskies trailed 35-31 at halftime and turned the tide of the game by outscoring the Golden Bears 28-15 in the third quarter on their way to the win.

“We still need to improve on defense, but we had a big surge in the second half and we were able to feed off the excitement from some big stops,” Michigan Tech coach Kim Cameron said. “Sarah LewAllen did a great job for us today slowing down Anna Schmitt, who is a great player for Concordia St. Paul. The key to today’s game was getting stops in the second half and Sarah was a big part of that.

“This was an important game for us to see how we would respond to a little bit of adversity. We learned a lot from the Augustana game about the areas we need to get better in, and I believe we will. It was nice to get this win to close the week and I really thought we got our excitement back in the second half today. This will give us a boost as we get set to open conference play on Thursday against Saginaw Valley State.”

Michigan Tech (6-1) fired out of the gate on an 8-1 run Saturday afternoon thanks to some solid shooting by senior Kelli Guy who would finish the game with 24 points. Guy got to the free throw line 31 seconds into the action and sank two attempts to put the Huskies in front 2-0. Guy then followed them up with back-to-back 3s to give Tech an 8-1 advantage with 8:02 left in the first quarter.

Tech kept the momentum going in quarter number four, pushing the lead out to 18 points at 70-52 thanks to a 3-point field goal by Guy. The Huskies had to withstand a late charge by the Golden Bears that reduced the cushion down to five at 81-76. Free throws proved to be key for Tech in the final 1:06 with Lindsay Winter and senior Brenna Heise combining to go 7 for 8 at the stripe. Heise’s two free throws with 27 seconds to play made it 83-76 and sealed the victory.

Guy paced the Huskies with 24 points by connecting on 8 of 15 shots from the field, including a 6 of 9 performance from behind the 3-point arc. She also dished out five assists and grabbed two rebounds in the victory. Winter followed with 18 points and five rebounds.

Next, Tech hosts Saginaw Valley State on Thursday.