CHARLOTTE, N.C. – A pair of three-pointers by Sydney Newsome and five quick points by Dasia Maxwell midway through the third quarter broke open what had been a nip-and-tuck contest as Lincoln Memorial University held off a late Queens rally to pick up the 82-78 win.

Queens (4-4, 0-3 South Atlantic Conference) shot out to an early six-point lead. LMU (4-3, 2-1 SAC) rallied back to tie it at 12-12 but a slew of turnovers that affected both teams (who combined for 47, with LMU having 27 of those) allowed the Royals to pull out to a 19-15 lead after one period.

The Royals pulled ahead 23-17 but four points by Maggie Jachimczuk and a basket by Newsome tied the game up at 23-23 at the halfway point of the frame. The lead then see-sawed back and forth the rest of the quarter with neither team gaining more than a three-point advantage and at the half it was all knotted up at 35-35.

The Lady Railsplitters had 16 turnovers at the half, while Queens had eight, and is one of the things Coach Krystal Evans emphasizes continually in practice. So, one of her talking points at the half was to cut down on the turnovers while turning up the defensive intensity. LMU did just that in the third period as they forced the Royals into nine turnovers over the quarter. Combine that with going 4-6 from behind the arc and it translated into an eight-point LMU lead.

With the score at 47-46 following a Rachel Griffith free throw, LMU got a defensive stop after Queens missed a pair of free throws and Cameryn DuBose grabbed the rebound. She got the ball out to Rachel Griffith, who drove into the paint and kicked it out to Newsome in the corner for the wide-open three-pointer. She would hit another trey a few minutes later and Maxwell hit a three-pointer and a pair of free throws over the next couple of minutes to give LMU the 56-48 lead with less than three minutes left in the third. Queens went on a five-point run, but a key basket by Maxwell and a pair of Griffith free throws had the Lady Railsplitters ahead 62-55 heading into the fourth quarter.

The Lady Railsplitters surged ahead to a 71-61 lead with 3:57 remaining in the game, but Queens started taking advantage of their size in the post to drive it in and go to the free throw line. This strategy worked enough to cut the lead to 74-77 with 33 seconds left, but Rachel Griffith would hit four free throws and Lexi Kiser went 1-2 down the stretch to seal the 82-78 victory for the Blue and Gray.

Rachel Griffith tied her career high with 22 points as she led all scorers on the afternoon. She also went an impressive 10-15 from the free throw line for the game. Newsome ended up one shy of her career high as she ended the day with 15 points, including three three-pointers. Dasia Maxwell came off the bench to have 14 points and a team-high seven rebounds while Jachimczuk chipped in 13 points.

Lade Adepoju led the Royals with 20 points, while Jaymi Golden chipped in 14.

LMU hit 48.1 percent (26-54) of their shots, while Queens matched up well in that statistic, hitting 42.9 percent (27-63) themselves. The key to the game was three-point shooting, as LMU went 10-17 for 52.8 percent from behind the arc, which was the fourth-best three-point performance as a team in LMU history. Queens went 3-12 (25.0%) from long-range. The Royals did slightly better at the free throw line, out-shooting LMU 63.6% to 55.6% for the game. The Lady Railsplitters did win the battle of the boards, out-rebounding Queens by a 38-35 margin.

LMU will step out of conference as they host former long-time rival Tennessee Wesleyan Tuesday evening at 6 p.m. in the Tex Turner Arena. The two teams were longtime local rivals and conference rivals from the 1930s until LMU joined the NCAA ranks in 1990. This will be only the second meeting since then. LMU won that previous meeting 100-67 last year in Harrogate.

One neat side-story of the LMU-TWU matchup is that the oldest living women's basketball player from both schools is the same person, Geneva Whitaker Rutherford. She played at Tennessee Wesleyan (then a junior college) from 1933-35 and then transferred to LMU where she played from 1935-37. She celebrated her 103rd birthday in June and officials from both schools, including Coach Evans, were there to help her celebrate.