Win streak reaches 10 as QU women’s basketball team pulls away from Rockhurst in second half

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The superstitious side of Courtney Boyd and the rest of the Quincy University women’s basketball coaching staff says to ignore all talk of win streaks and climbs toward the top of the Great Lakes Valley Conference.

Then you realize what the Hawks are doing is beyond impressive.

Quincy ran its win streak to 10 consecutive games Saturday, scoring 47 points in the second half of a 77-63 victory over Rockhurst in Great Lakes Valley Conference play at Mason-Halpin Field House. Suddenly, a team that won just 10 games all of last season has strung together 10 in a row this season.

“You put it in that perspective and it’s like, ‘My goodness, you’re right,’ and with that you know that it’s kind of a big feat,” said Boyd, in her second season as Quincy’s head coach. “Just because we’re coaches, we don’t want to be superstitious about it but it is the elephant in the room that everyone else wants to talk about or ask about.”

It’s unavoidable.

“With social media, every time you win, it gets put out there,” Boyd said. “This team has done a good job of handling that and being able to grind through it.”

That continues to be the case as Quincy (16-5, 10-2 GLVC) finds ways to circumvent each challenger.

This time, Quincy trailed Rockhurst 17-13 at the end of the first quarter before taking a three-point lead into halftime. Quincy scored 11 of the first 13 points of the third quarter to take a double-digit lead and limited Rockhurst to 31.6 percent shooting from the field overall.

“Every opponent has been different, even (Southwest Baptist) and Rockhurst this weekend,” Boyd said. “They were two completely different teams, but what they showed us is we had to guard and we had to score differently. It was a good challenge for us on the road.”

Quincy made just 9 of 27 field goals in the first half (33.3 percent) and didn’t take the lead for good until Karsyn Stratton’s 3-pointer with 1:15 remaining in the second quarter.

“We couldn’t find the bottom of the net, and I think we were avoiding their contact,” Boyd said. “So at halftime, they’re longer than us, but that doesn’t mean they’re more skilled than us. So we can’t avoid the contact. We had to get downhill and get to the free-throw line.”

Quincy went 15 of 23 from the free-throw line in the second half, including taking 17 attempts in the fourth quarter alone. It also committed just four second-half turnovers compared to eight in the first half.

“We were able to find a little bit more space,” Boyd said. “We weren’t forcing as much.”

Chomp Danso led Quincy with 20 points, while Nicole McDermott had 18 points and eight rebounds. Cymirah Williams finished with eight points and eight rebounds.