How the Missouri State Lady Bears continued to own Drake with 9th-straight win over Bulldogs

In her five years at Missouri State, Sydney Wilson has been to two Sweet 16s and three NCAA Tournaments since the last time she lost to Drake. After Saturday afternoon's 64-54 win over the Bulldogs, she was asked if she could even remember it.

"Nope," Wilson laughed. "I do not."

The loss came on March 3, 2019, in the final game Kellie Harper coached at Great Southern Bank Arena. The Bulldogs were ranked No. 23 in the country and the Lady Bears couldn't pull it off until they got them back in a dominant 94-79 win in the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament Championship just two weeks later.

Since then, the Lady Bears have won nine straight against the Bulldogs, including Saturday. The team has had three different head coaches over the stretch which included first-year head coach Beth Cunningham's first over the conference rival. It was also her first sweep of the Iowa schools which included a 14-point comeback to beat Northern Iowa on Thursday.

"We're headed in the right direction," Wilson said. "These were two very hard games and they're very good. We came out into it with a lot of confidence in each other and we just came out on top."

The young Lady Bears' confidence should be growing after knocking off two teams ahead of them in the standings over a three-day span. They are now tied with Drake at 7-3 in the conference and are half of a game behind Northern Iowa and a game and a half out of first with Illinois State. MSU will play each team once on the road before the regular season is complete.

The veteran duo of Wilson and Aniya Thomas led the way for MSU on Saturday by combining for 29 points but the younger players are starting to enforce their will as well.

With a short bench as Isabelle Delarue deals with a stress fracture that will sit her out for at least another week, a seven-person rotation was used throughout the two games. Sophomore guard Taylor Woodhouse and freshman Jade Masogayo have been the two off the bench.

Masogayo scored 12 points when starting the game 5 of 5 from the field after going 6 of 6 from the field in Thursday's win. She's scored in double figures in each of the last four games.

Woodhouse knocked down a pair of critical 3's on back-to-back possessions in the second quarter which gave the Lady Bears an eight-point lead. They never led by less than five for the remainder of the game afterward.

The two have recently had one-on-ones with Cunningham to talk about how to get better. They've taken it to heart and have been a reason why the team is playing at the high level it is.

"I try to communicate as much as I can with kids as far as 'these are the areas you're doing really well and these are the areas where you need to get better,'" Cunningham said. "(Taylor) came up to me like 'coach, what else do I need to do?' and she's come in and just stayed hungry and continued to work at it.

"With Jade, I told her 'we are counting on you. We need you to be there and step up and not have a passive mentality. Whatever your role is, you have to do it to the best of your ability. If you don't like what your role is, then you work like heck to change it. I felt like Jade wasn't giving us everything that she had. I felt like she had more in the tank. She can change our team and she does change our team."

The defensive end is where the Lady Bears might have impressed the most while holding the Bulldogs to 54 points and just 38.6% from the field. Drake never led for the entire game and it came into it averaging 81.9 points ranking 11th in the nation in scoring.

Drake got 20 points from Maggie Bair and 14 from Grace Berg as the others combined for 20 points on 5 of 24 shooting. The 54 points were the fewest the Lady Bears have allowed since allowing the same to Bradley, which hasn't won a Valley game yet, and the 48 they allowed in a win over Little Rock on Dec. 21.

Drake, the top 3-point shooting team in the league, made three in the first half before only making one in the second.

"I mean, that was huge," Cunningham said. "Our kids just had great awareness. We were really disciplined with our closeouts and taking away the 3-point shot and then just staying down and trying to contain."

Missouri State is now the winner of its last three as it heads to Southern Illinois on Wednesday for a 6 p.m. game before hosting Illinois Chicago on Saturday at 1 p.m. The Lady Bears were dominant in the second half of a 78-57 win over the Salukis on Jan. 11.

Some familiar magic was felt in Great Southern Bank Arena during the Lady Bears' home stand against the Iowa schools. That magic had been felt plenty over the previous four seasons and we'll see what the remainder of this year brings.

But dominance over Drake, one of the premier teams in the Missouri Valley Conference, hasn't changed a bit.

"We're far from playing our perfect game," Cunningham said. "That's an exciting thing. We did some really, really good thing at both ends of the floor. As a coach, there are still a lot of things we can still improve on and a lot of areas to get better. Our kids did a great job."

Wyatt D. Wheeler is a reporter and columnist with the Springfield News-Leader. You can contact him at 417-371-6987, by email at wwheeler@news-leader.com or Twitter at @WyattWheeler_NL. He's also the co-host of Sports Talk on Jock Radio weekdays from 4-6 p.m.

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Missouri State Lady Bears continue to own Drake in Valley play