OKLAHOMA CITY ? Oklahoma City University knocked off USAO 75-47 on Thursday to continue a high-scoring trend for the Stars.
Mariam Sy, a 6-foot-4 senior from Mali, West Africa, led OCU with 23 points and 10 rebounds. Alexandra Kotta and Paty Silva each added eight points.
OCU, ranked third in NAIA Division I women?s basketball, improved to 24-2, 15-0 in the Sooner Athletic Conference. The Stars won their 19th consecutive game. USAO fell to 14-10, 7-8.
Katie Sterling led USAO with 18 points.
?They?ve got some kids that are very difficult to guard," OCU coach Rob Edmisson said. "You got to contest their 3 because they can get hot and shoot you out of the game. I?m telling my kids don?t give up the 3 and don?t give up dribble penetration. I?m not really sure you can do that as a coach. She hurt us off the dribble all night long."
OCU had 21 turnovers.
"We have expectations for quality of play but it probably wasn?t there tonight for a large degree of the minutes," Edmisson said. "I thought second half we got sloppy. I?m not saying I?m unappreciative, we won by 28. They were unforced turnovers. We got kids just flipping at it and not diving on it like a live grenade trying to protect somebody. Some of our passes weren?t sharp."
The Stars had a 51-25 rebounding advantage.
"I thought Mariam played really hard tonight," Edmisson said. "I thought we did a good job outrebounding them by 25, and that was the difference in the game tonight."
The Stars have won their last three games by an average margin of 40 points. In that span, OCU has scored 80.7 points per game.
OCU as a team got 11 steals, led by two each from Zanita Johnson, Kotta and Sy.
The Stars play Southern Nazarene on Saturday at 6 p.m. in the Sawyer Center in Bethany, Okla.
Due to the OCU baseball doubleheader overlapping with the women's basketball game, a special tape-delay broadcast of Thursday's women's game will be played at 6 p.m. Friday on okcu.edu/athletics.