KERRVILLE, Texas -- The Texas Lutheran Bulldogs posted just the second 20-win women's basketball season in school history and stretched their school-record win streak to 11 games with a 63-58 road victory Saturday over Schreiner University.
Already assured the top seed for the upcoming Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Championship, the Bulldogs stuck to their winning ways in a tough, back-and-forth battle with the Mountaineers. In Schreiner's Edington Center, the Bulldogs and Mountains traded leads five times, and the scored was tied seven times.
TLU finally pulled away in the final five minutes.
Karisa Cantu (San Antonio/MacArthur) made back-to-back buckets to put TLU ahead to stay with 4:45 to play, and
Dalia Camargo (Mission/Mission) added a pair of jumpers with less than 3:13 remaining to push the Bulldogs' lead to six.
Cantu would hit two more jump-shots to push the TLU advantage to eight with 1:15 remaining and to eight again with 38 seconds on the clock.
Camargo scored a career-high 23 points with a career-high 10 field goals made. The senior guard hit 10 of her 14 shot attempts and made 3-of-4 free throws. Camargo's previous career-high was nine points. She added three rebounds, an assist, and a steal against Schreiner.
Cantu, TLU's leading scorer, notched 13 of her 15 points in the second half. She was 5-for-5 from the field (and 1-for-1 from three-point line) in the second half.
Taylor Dydalewicz (Dripping Springs/Lake Travis) contributed eight points and three rebounds.
The Bulldogs shot 42.2 percent from the field and 27.3 percent from the three-point line.
For the second time this season, Schreiner (14-11, 9-5) out-scored TLU from the three-point line (18-9). TLU has been out-scored from the three-point line only two times in victories this season, and both instances have come against Schreiner.
TLU's 20-win season is the program's first since Coach Lana Urbanek and the Bulldogs went 22-6 and won the Big State Conference Championship in 1984-85.
The last 20-win season for the TLU men or women came in the 1995-95 men's basketball season with Coach Jim Shuler at the helm.
TLU's overall record of 20-5 and its conference mark of 12-2 are school records for TLU's NCAA Division III era. The 20-5 record is the best regular season mark in TLU's DIII history, and the 12-2 record is TLU's top conference mark in its DIII history. The Bulldogs first official women's basketball season in NCAA Division III was the 2002-03 season.
The school-record 11 consecutive wins is the most by a TLU women's basketball team since the 1984-85 team won eight in a row.
The Bulldogs take the 11 consecutive wins and the 20-5 record into the SCAC Championship. As the No. 1 seed, TLU opens the women's tournament on Friday with a 2 p.m. quarterfinal game with No. 8 seed Centenary (La.).
The Ladies are 0-23 overall and went 0-14 in the SCAC. The Bulldogs swept the season series against the Ladies with a 66-55 win Jan. 24 in Shreveport, La., and with a 75-50 Jan. 31 victory in Seguin.
