By Jesse Cordova & Danny Bailey

The Missouri Southern women’s basketball team is now officially at the mercy of the Regional Selection Committee. The Lions fell 74-66 in overtime in the first round of the MIAA Tournament today to Northwest Missouri State. Senior point guard India Wood was the catalyst of the Southern offensive attack. Early in the second half, Wood suffered a cut on her shooting hand. After that, the spark was gone and the Lion offense sputtered out. Wood would only net 3 more points after the first half. Wood finished with 13 points. But, senior forward Tynesha Pierce led the Lions attack with 14. “We threw the game away, literally, said Maryann Mitts women’s head basketball coach.”30 turnovers, seven from our point guard, 21 offensive rebounds (for Northwest) compared to just nine for us.”The Lions had a comfortable lead late but then Lauren Williams of Northwest sparked a run forcing overtime. Williams finished with 18 points. In the overtime session Southern was outscored 12-4. “It wasn’t good,” Mitts said when asked about the team’s mindset going into overtime without Pierce. Pierce fouled out with 28 seconds to play in regulation. “We’ve had a great year hopefully it continues next week but the one thing we have struggled with as a basketball team is to fight through adversity. There is no doubt we had some adversity. I did not like the feeling going into overtime,” Mitts said.As usual Gene Steinmeyer, the Northwest head coach, had nothing but good things to say about Southern.”The nice thing about this is that I don’t believe that this will be the last game for either team, Steinmeyer said.”I believe the Region has to take four teams from the MIAA, so if one of the top three teams wins this tournament I really think that Southern will be in.”