The UW-Platteville women’s basketball team outpaced the Yellowjackets of UW-Superior 55-46 on Feb.16. With the win, the Pioneers moved into sole possession of sixth place in the WIAC.

UW-Superior led for much of the early stages of the game. After Lisa Grantman scored a three-pointer with just under 10 minutes in the first half, the Pioneers took the lead and never looked back. Grantman hit another big three with about a minute left in the first to put UW-P up by 12. By halftime, Grantman had scored 15 of her 17 total points. The Pioneer women headed into halftime leading 30-21.

“We weren’t going to sit back, we weren’t going to underestimate them, we were going to take it to them,” sophomore forward Druscilla Schneider said.

In the second half, the Yellowjackets surged back to within two points as they shot 42 percent opposed to the Pioneers with only 30 percent from the field. However, UW-S didn’t sink a three-pointer the entire second half. Lisa Wubben scored nine of her 12 points in the second to record a double-double with her 10 rebounds.

“Lisa Wubben has been the steady on our team all this year,” head coach Tina Kuhle said.

The Pioneers traveled to UW-Whitewater on Feb. 13 to face the conference rival Warhawks. Going into the game, UW-Whitewater was ranked third in the NCAA Division III. UW-P took an early lead in the game and seemed primed to make a run at the upset. It was not to be, as the Warhawks controlled the action after the early stages of the game.

Thanks to a 15-point run in the middle of the first half, UW-W soared to a 29-8 lead with just under eight minutes remaining in the first half. The Pioneers limped into halftime trailing 41-18 as the Warhawks nailed almost 50 percent of their threes and sank 40 percent of their shots from the field.

“We knew coming in that it was going to be a tough road and that Whitewater was going to be a tough opponent,” Kuhle said.

In the second half, UW-P scored 46 points as Wubben, Angie Vamstad and Grantman netted double figures for the game, scoring 21, 12 and 11 points respectively.

“At halftime, we all knew we had a horrible first half, and we knew we were better than that, so in the second half we wanted to go out and show we were a better team,” freshman guard Vamstad said.

The Platteville surge wasn’t enough as UW-Whitewater kept pace scoring 53 of their own and ending the game with a 94-64 Warhawk win.

“We only really played hard for about 25 minutes, and we needed to play hard for the full 40 minutes in order to beat them,” Schneider said.

After splitting the games last week, the Pioneers are 11-12 overall and 5-9 in WIAC play. UW-Stevens Point comes to town at 3 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 23, to finish out the regular season. The WIAC playoffs start Tuesday, Feb. 26, and end Saturday, March 1, with the championship game.