The University of Minnesota Duluth women's basketball team wasted no time downing Concordia University, St. Paul 61-44 to sweep its Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference opponents this weekend. The Bulldogs came into the weekend riding a four-game losing streak, but have moved to 13-8 and 10-7 in the NSIC with their win over the Golden Bears.

With just over two and a half minutes remaining in the first quarter, the score sat at 6-4 in favor of the Bulldogs before junior guard Taylor Schneider corralled an offensive rebound and laid it back in to give either team their first basket in 2:36 of play. The quarter would wrap up with UMD up 11-9. The Bulldogs forced seven turnovers in the first 10 minutes of play, but could only notch five points off those turnovers. Freshman forward Sarah Grow had a solid second quarter with four points, two blocks, and two rebounds. Grow would finish with eight points on 4-of-10 shooting, seven rebounds, and four blocks. Coming out of halftime with a 29-20 lead, UMD effectively put the game out of reach by outscoring CSP 19-10 in the third quarter.

Freshman guard Ann Simonet led all scorers with 14 points on 6-of-7 shooting (85.7 percent), adding five rebounds, a pair of assists and steals to her stat sheet.

UMD held CSP to just 3-of-19 (15.8 percent) from three-point land, and limited CSP to just 30.2 percent shooting from the floor on the evening.

The Bulldogs' defense held the NSIC's leading scorer Anna Schmitt to just four points off 1-of-10 shooting and 0-for-4 from beyond the arc. Coming into the weekend, the 5-foot-7 guard ranked 12th in the nation for Division-II with 20.4 points per game. Schmitt was held to a season low two points in her performance against Winona State University back on December 9, 2017 but only played for eight minutes and would sit out the following two games. 

UMD forced 20 turnovers on the afternoon, and have now forced 20 or more turnovers in back-to-back games for the fourth time this season. The last time the Bulldogs reached such a feat was back in 2013-14, when they also have four such occurrences. 

UMD improves to 11-2 on the year when leading at halftime.

The Bulldogs remain at home for an NSIC bout against the St. Cloud State University Huskies on Tuesday (Feb. 6) at 5 p.m. SCSU is coming off a 62-49 win over the Golden Bears.