NIC women’s basketball beats Salt Lake at home

The Lady Cardinals earned another win defeating the Bruins of Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) Saturday night 68-54 at Rolly Williams Court.

NIC was previously defeated by SLCC earlier this month 56-48 at Salt Lake, which has been NIC’s only loss so far this year.

Sophomore Angela Woods led the Cardinals in scoring with 16 points, hitting five of seven shots from behind the three-point line.

NIC went up early in the first half, but had two starters — Georgia Stirton and Katie Buskey — on the bench in foul trouble for a majority of the first half.

Only two minutes and 44 seconds into the game, Buskey stepped up to hit a three-pointer to put NIC up 10-6.

“We got into foul trouble in the first half,” said head coach Chris Carlson. “We brought in Jansen Butler, who doesn’t play a lot, and she came out and played point guard for us and did a great job off the bench.”

Stirton had 11 points and five assists in the game. Hannah Love followed with 11 points of her own. Buskey scored 10 points.

“We’ve been working a lot on our transition game, which really helped us get this win,” Woods said. “Being able to run up and down the court well helped us on offense and defense.”

NIC had lost two straight against Salt Lake, dating back to the Region 18 tournament semifinals last season.

“This was a solid win for us,” Carlson said. “They are a good team, and they fought all the way through until the end, but we prevailed.”

In other conference women’s games, Southern Idaho (13-11, 7-2) beat Snow (8-14, 2-6) 66-54 in Twin Falls and Utah State-Eastern (6-14, 3-5) beat Colorado Northwestern (12-11, 1-7) 68-52 in Price, Utah.

NIC hosts the Golden Eagles of the College of Southern Idaho Saturday at 3.