ST. CHARLES - They spent the majority of this magical season building large leads and then trying to protect them late, fending off any potential charges from their foes.

On Sunday afternoon, the nationally eighth-ranked Drury Lady Panthers showed they could most certainly come back from a big deficit, too.

Down 18 points with 13 minutes to play, the top seed Lady Panthers dug deep behind the efforts of seniors Sanayika Shields and Shelby White and sparks from just about everywhere else to roar back and beat No. 3 seed Southern Indiana 68-65 for the Great Lakes Valley Conference Championship and an automatic NCAA-II tourney big late Sunday afternoon at Family Arena.

It marked the third GLVC title for the Lady Panthers, who moved to 26-3 on the season with their 14th consecutive victory. Their original crown came in 2008 at Weiser Gym, when current first-year head coach Molly (Carter) Miller was the team's star. Drury added another crown in 2010 with a squad that included current assistant coach and former standout Katie Pritchard.

And it also guaranteed the Lady Panthers their second straight NCAA-II tourney trip, after advancing to the Elite Eight for the third time last season. It will be the 12th time in the last 13 years that Drury will be in the 64-team NCAA field when the visit Houghton, Mich., next weekend as the third seed to take on 6-seed Wayne State in the Friday (noon) opener, as the team learned late Sunday when the NCAA pairings were announced.

But few invites to the Big Dance came the way this one did, as the Lady Panthers had to fight, scrap and claw their way to a 23rd victory in their last 24 games.

And they followed the leads of their senior duo and their rookie coach to get the job done against a Southern Indiana team that fell to 25-6 and had flown under the radar nationally most of the season.

The Screaming Eagles - who lost 64-54 at Drury on January 8 - jumped on the Lady Panthers early, building a 38-28 halftime lead. USI not only shot 53 percent (16 of 30) to Drury's 40 percent (12 of 30), but also dominated the boards by a 21-14 count, taking advantage of a DU lineup missing Shields, who played only five minutes in the opening half after picking up two quick fouls.

That swelled to 18 (51-33) when Mary O'Keefe made a pair of free throws for USI with 13:33 remaining. The only larger deficit Drury faced this season was 21 points, very late in an eventual 80-64 loss at William Jewell on January 17, which also happens to be the Lady Panthers' last loss.

Shields came back to play 19 big second-half minutes and finish with 14 points, five rebounds and three steals in earning tourney Most Valuable Player honors.

But the true spark on this day came from White - 16 points, six rebounds and five huge steals - and sophomore reserve guard Alice Heinzler, who had 14 points and three steals and came up with three pivotal 3-pointers during DU's second-half rally, which amounted to a 24-3 run that brought the Lady Panthers back from the dead.

"We had good pressure out front, and when the ball winds up in Shelby's hands, good things happen," said junior guard Annie Armstrong, who joined Shields on the All-Tournament team.

"It all starts with Shelby," Miller said of the senior who came up with four second-half steals. "Her and Sanayika want this so bad, and their teammates could feel that. They just refused to lose. I thought Shelby getting those steals and us turning them into points at the other end was a huge momentum boost."

"It was just effort, intensity ... and playing with everything you had," Shields said afterward, particularly of an improved defensive intensity that helped the Lady Panthers force 16 USI second-half turnovers with their full-court pressure.

Drury answered that 18-point deficit with a 12-0 run to cut it to 51-45 with 7:38 to go on a pair of Shields free throws. The Lady Panthers finally caught the Screaming Eagles when Heinzler made a trey for a 55-54 lead with 5:28 left, and a Shields steal and layup pushed that to four.

But USI fought right back and tied it at 60 on a Tanner Marcum jumper with 3:38 to play, and went up 64-60 after two O'Keefe free throws with just 1:53 remaining.

Drury - which led for a total of 2 minutes, 44 seconds in the game - countered with an Addy Roller layup, then a White steal led to a Heinzler free throw with 1:37 to play to cut it to one.

Shields' scored with 55 seconds to go to put Drury on top for good at 65-64, and the nation's leading free-throw shooting team made just enough from there to secure the victory, surviving a desperation half-court attempt from USI's Anna Hackert in the closing seconds, as the Lady Panthers broke into celebration at mid-floor.

"Games like this, you just kinda felt it was meant to be, that the stars have aligned for us, so to speak," said Miller. "Now we'll go wherever they tell us to go for the NCAA tournament and play our best ball from here on out."

Hackert finished with 12 points and 13 rebounds to lead USI, which was forced into 24 turnovers for the game by the Lady Panthers' defense.

Roller finished with 13 points for DU, which shot just 40 percent (23 of 58) from the field, but turned up the defensive heat just in time to snag a league title in front of a large and numbed Drury crowd after the Panthers had earlier won a nail-biter to claim the men's GLVC title and automatic NCAA bid.

"It's a great day to be a Panther," Miller said. "With the guys and girls getting back-to-back championships like this, it's something special.

"I hope the girls realize this doesn't happen often ... and for Drury to do this today in front of this amazing crowd of all of our fans who came up and the St. Louis alums who came out ... they gave us so much energy. They were saying, 'C'mon, you've got this.' We were tired, and they really helped bring us back."