LONGVIEW, Texas – American Southwest play opened up for the LeTourneau University women's basketball team as the YellowJackets would fall to the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor by a final score of 85-53 at Solheim Arena in Longview, Texas on Thursday, November 30th.

LETU falls to 1-4 overall and 0-1 in the ASC while the visiting Crusaders improved to 4-1 overall and 1-0 in the ASC.

"Mary Hardin-Baylor played a really good game tonight and I felt like we didn't have the energy to match them" said head coach Cassi Rozanski in a post-game interview. "It's always good to see our offense when they can go on runs and when we do things that we work on we typically are successful on the offensive side." "This early in the season we can go one of two directions, so I hope we can bounce back and fix our mistakes that we weren't able to execute on tonight."

The game would serve as the 2017-18 home opener for LeTourneau, who would fall behind by a score of 10-2 early on in the game before a layup by freshman guard Keauna Whitfield cut the Cru lead down to 10-4 midway through the opening period. LETU would face shooting woes throughout the first quarter, hitting just three shots in the opening 10 minutes of play and going 0-5 from beyond the three-point line as UMHB shot just over 50 percent from the field to take a 25-8 lead at the end of the first quarter.

Offense would start to pick up for the YellowJackets in the second quarter as LETU opened the period by scoring 11 of the first 13 points capped off by a Sha'Donnaver Young layup in the paint with 5:52 remaining in the first half. LeTourneau would not be able to capitalize on the run however, as Mary Hardin-Baylor would use a 13-0 run of their own to break the game open and lead by a score of 40-19 before the two teams would trade baskets to end the half and put the score at 42-21 in favor of the visiting team. Rebounding would play a big factor in the first half as UMHB held a 26-16 advantage on the glass and scored eight second chance points in the opening 20 minutes.

UMHB managed to open up the second half in similar fashion to the way that they ended the first half, scoring 11 straight points after trading buckets with LETU to start the third quarter. Three point shooting would finally start to click for the YellowJackets midway through the third as a pair of treys by Whitfield as well as a triple by Ashley Reed and Savannah Cummings would cut into the Cru lead and bring LETU back to a score of 60-37 heading into the fourth quarter.

LeTourneau would look to make another run to start the fourth quarter after scoring five of the first seven points of the quarter, but UMHB would once again tighten up on defense while utilizing their free throw shooting to extend their lead. The Cru would score 10 of their first 17 points of the fourth quarter at the charity stripe, and manage to pull away for the convincing victory.

Second half shooting would pick up for the YellowJackets who finished 20 of 56 (35.7 percent) from the floor in the game, but were able to shoot 11-27 (40.74 percent) in the second half. UMHB managed to hold a 54-38 rebounding edge in the game, collecting 22 offensive rebounds and scoring 28 points in the paint.

LETU was led by a double-double from Whitfield who finished the game with 16 points and 11 rebounds while Young also wound up in double-figure points with 12. Madison Mayfield recorded one block in the game while Jaila Leaven added two steals to go along with four points.

LeTourneau will get a chance to bounce back in their final home game before the turn of the new year when they host Concordia University Texas at 2 p.m. on Saturday, December 2nd. CTX will be looking for their first ASC win of the year following a 68-49 road loss to East Texas Baptist University Thursday night.