Bailey's late three-pointer lifts Gophers women over Hoosiers

Her team was unraveling and then up she stepped.

Mikayla Bailey made a three-pointer with 24 seconds left in the fourth quarter to give the Gophers women's basketball team a 78-76 victory over Indiana on Sunday afternoon at Williams Arena.

Indiana, trailing the entire fourth quarter, had just gone ahead 76-75 with 38 seconds remaining when Bailey hit from the corner for only her second field goal of the game on eight attempts.

After a missed shot by the Hoosiers with six seconds left, Annalese Lamke missed two free throws, but Bailey was there to grab the offensive rebound and seal the victory in front of an announced crowd of 4,337.

"Before we went in for the play, I told Carlie [Wagner], 'Take it all the way, you've been making those all night,' and she got cut off and passed me the ball," Bailey said of the winning shot. "And I just stayed relaxed and poised and hit the shot."

The Gophers (11-6, 3-3 Big Ten) ended a two-game losing streak as they began a stretch of three games in seven days, and they defeated Indiana (10-8, 2-4) for the third consecutive time. The Hoosiers were coming off a victory over 18th-ranked Michigan State.

Rachel Banham led four Gophers in double figures with 24 points. Banham scored 20 points in the first half, including 13 in the second quarter, when the Gophers shot 12-for-15 from the field and took their largest lead of the game, 10 points.

Banham moved past former Ohio State and WNBA star Katie Smith and into third place on the Big Ten's all-time scoring list. Banham's 2,581 points trail only Penn State's Kelly Mazzante (2,919 from 2001-04) and Ohio State's Jantel Lavender (2,818 from 2008-11).

Banham also had a game-high nine rebounds, including four on the offensive end.

Wagner and Shayne Mullaney scored 14 points apiece, and Allina Starr had a season-high 10, eight of which came in the first half when she made all four of her field-goal attempts. Wagner also had six assists. Joanna Hedstrom had five points and seven rebounds off the bench in 25 minutes.

But it was Bailey who had the biggest basket of the game, and maybe the second-biggest as well. Her three-pointer as time expired in the third quarter gave her team a five-point lead going into the final 10 minutes.

As a team, the Gophers made five threes, below their season average of 9.3, but that didn't trouble coach Marlene Stollings.

"I thought we got great looks, and we missed a lot of them at the basket, that's something we've got to clean up," Stollings said. "You know, those are great drives, we've just got to collect and finish at the basket. And we will, we'll get better at that, but the looks that we wanted we absolutely got."

Indiana's top scorer, Tyra Buss, had 17 points on 6-for-13 shooting. One of the nation's leaders in free-throw attempts, Buss was limited to four. Kym Royster had career highs in points (17) and rebounds (eight).