The nationally 21st-ranked Drury Lady Panthers will kick off a big run of home games by entertaining Truman State in a 5:45 p.m. Great Lakes Valley Conference tipoff Thursday at the O'Reilly Family Event Center.

Coach Molly Miller's Lady Panthers, who stayed at No. 21 in Tuesday's release of the USA TODAY Sports/WBCA Top 25 national poll, are 14-3 overall and 8-1 in the GLVC, owning a two-game lead over runner-up Quincy (which visits The O' on Saturday, 1 p.m.).

The game against the Bulldogs starts a span of seven out of nine games at home for Drury, which completed its recent four-game GLVC swing through the state of Missouri with a 3-1 mark, including big wins last weekend at Maryville (77-70) and Missouri-St. Louis (66-48).

Truman State is 11-6 overall and in a three-way tie for third in the GLVC West with a 5-4 league mark. The Bulldogs picked up league wins at home last weekend, defeating William Jewell 61-58 and Rockhurst 72-66, which snapped a three-game losing streak.

Allie Norton, a 5-6 senior, averages 15.4 points and Courtney Strait, a 5-10 junior, adds 14.4 points and 5.7 rebounds to lead Truman, which gets 9.9 points and a team-leading 7.0 rebounds from Michalina Tomczak, a 6-3 junior, for second-year coach Amy Eagan's squad.

Junior guard Annie Armstrong, the reigning GLVC Player of the Week (for the second time this season), averages 15.1 points to lead the Lady Panthers, who receive 12.0 points and 9.1 rebounds from senior post Sanayika Shields and 10.9 points from junior guard Addy Roller.

Thursday's game, which is part of the American Cancer Society's "Black Out Cancer Night" (with all fans of both teams encouraged to wear black), can be heard on JOCK 98.7 FM (streamed live at www.jock987.com), and can be viewed on a free, live webcast at www.drurypanthers.com/watch.

LADY PANTHERS NOTES

*Miller's squad, which has won 20 of its last 22 games at The O', leads Truman State 8-0 in the all-time series, including an 83-76 win last year in Kirksville.

*The Lady Panthers are 15th nationally in the latest Massey Ratings index, with Lewis No. 1 in those rankings as well as the USA TODAY Sports/Top 25 national poll. Drury will visit the top-ranked Flyers on February 12 in Romeoville, Ill.

*Shields, with 154 rebounds this season, now has an even 500 rebounds for her four-year DU career, becoming just the ninth player in the program's history to reach that mark. She needs 13 rebounds to surpass Abby Bracker (512 from 2009-13) for eighth place on the all-time Drury boards list.

*Drury leads the nation in free-throw percentage (.818), with Armstrong continuing to rank No. 1 individually in NCAA-II at 95.4 percent (62 of 65). The Lady Panthers are sixth nationally in fewest turnovers per game (11.6).

*The Lady Panthers will welcome GLVC West second-place Quincy to The O' for an approximate 1 p.m. tipoff following a girls high school basketball contest in the arena that starts at 11 a.m. It's "Great Southern Bank Throwback Day," which also includes a "Fan Appreciation Concert" on Friday night at The O' featuring Boogie Wonderland from Kansas City, which will cover great 70s and 80s soul, funk and disco music starting at 8 p.m. The concert is free to DU season-ticket holders, faculty/staff and students as well as Great Southern employees with ID. The general public is invited at $5 per person, which includes a free ticket to the Drury-Quincy basketball doubleheader on Saturday.