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TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – The Northeastern State women's basketball team defeated Northwestern Oklahoma State 67-45 Friday night inside the NSU Event Center.
 
The RiverHawks (1-0) had a successful start to their season on the first day of the 2014 Stuteville Automotive Group MIAA GAC Basketball Challenge, while the Rangers fell to 0-1 on the young campaign.
 
Senior guard Chelsey Beathard paced NSU with a game-high 13 points. Junior guard Kate Bellamy was right behind with 12 points, and she also added six rebounds, four assists and three steals in 24 minutes.
 
NSU trailed 3-2 early in the contest, but Beathard connected on a 3-point attempt at the 14:25 mark, and the home team led the rest of the game.
 
The RiverHawks led 38-21 at intermission and pulled ahead by 28 points in the second half before settling for the final 22-point margin.
 
Northeastern State shot 44.2 percent (23-for-52) from the field, 44 percent (11-for-25) from downtown and 71.4 percent (10-for-14) at the free-throw line. NWOSU shot 31.7 percent (13-for-41) from the field, 47.1 percent (8-for-17) from deep and 55 percent (11-for-20) at the charity stripe.
 
Kalea King and Relina Johnson both had 11 points for the Rangers.
 
Northeastern State will close out the season-opening tournament with a 6 p.m. contest Nov. 15 against Southeastern Oklahoma State.

NORTHEASTERN STATE COACH RANDY GIPSON
Opening Statement...
"I think we were a little tentative starting the game as you might expect in a first game situation. But I thought we kicked in and we started moving better on offense. When we moved better we shot better. I thought we had a great run in the latter part of the first half to get a pretty good handle on the game. Then we had a good run to start the second half. It's a good deal from the standpoint that we have a lot of new players and we had the opportunity to play everybody significant minutes. I think everybody contributed. It was a good, solid team effort in our first game."
 
On taking the momentum into tomorrow and the rest of the season...
"It's going to be important that we get our focus on tomorrow pretty quickly. Southeastern is a good team; a veteran team that presents a lot of problems with the way they run their offense. They're quick and they drive the ball really well. They have some veteran players that can score. We're going to have to have a lot of energy on defense to guard this team. They really push the ball down the floor. Getting back on defense is going to be a challenge as well. In a tournament setting like this, you don't have time to dwell on the game that was just played. You've got to get ready for the next one. So that's what our plan is. We'll get together and do our shootaround tomorrow and try to get ready to play tomorrow night."
 
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