The Drury Lady Panthers, less than a week after falling to the number-one ranked team in the nation, bounced back in a big way on Saturday afternoon, capturing a solid 84-66 win over the Riverhawks of Northeastern State at the O'Reilly Family Event Center, in their final outing prior to the holiday break.
 
The Lady Panthers set a quick tone to the contest, draining seven of their first shot attempts, on their way to an early double-figure edge and ultimately to a 44-20 lead over the Riverhawks at halftime.  Early pressure defense played an equally big part in their first half push.
 
"We felt we could be aggressive with them and our plan was to trap early and I thought that helped to put them on their heels," said Drury head coach Kaci Bailey.
 
Following the intermission break, the Lady Panthers continued to control the pace of the game and were never pressed by the Riverhawks as they improved to 7-3 overall on the season with the win.
 
Senior Makaiya Brooks was at the top of a balanced Drury scoring effort, finishing with a season-best 16 points.  Sophomore Sara Mendel closed with 14, while senior Anna Hitt added 11.
 
The Lady Panthers shared the ball well in the win, finishing with 20 assists on 31 made shots.  Leading the way in that department was senior Caitlynn Daniels, who dished out nine and in doing so moved past the 400 mark in assists for her career.
 
"Some of her passes, wow," added Bailey.   "And she could have had a few more, but we missed on some layups, but I mean, what a career with over four-hundred assists."
 
Northeastern State got an 11 point effort from Annaston Brown to lead their scoring as they fell to 5-6 overall on the season.
 
The Lady Panthers are idle through the end of the calendar year and will return to action on Friday, January 3rd, when they travel to William Jewell for a 5:30pm Great Lakes Valley Conference showdown.