Aurora, IL – The #3 seeded Dominican University women's basketball team's season came to an end on Thursday night, as #2 seeded Aurora overpowered the Stars offensively, 101-61, to eliminate them in the NACC Tournament South Division Semifinals.

Stephenee Huggans scored a team-high 19 points, going 9-of-17 (52.9%) from the field while Hannah Currant was the only other Star in double-figures with 10 on an efficient 5-of-7 shooting.

Dominican hung with Aurora in the early going as a Huggans step back jumper gave the Stars a 9-7 lead just over four minutes into the contest. Unfortunately, turnovers would start to plague Dominican and Aurora capitalized by finishing the opening session on a 19-9 run to hold a 26-16 advantage heading to the second.

The Spartans rolled that momentum into the second stanza as they began the period on an 11-4 run to balloon the margin to 17, 37-20, at the 5:54 mark before Kamryn Woods briefly halted the run with a layup.

Aurora held a double-digit advantage for the rest of the half as a bucket with three seconds remaining gave the home team a 44-30 edge at the break.

A Currant layup was the first points of the second half for either team but the Spartans would erupt for a 16-2 run over the next two minutes and change to stretch their lead to 62-34 at the 6:44 mark of the third quarter. The Stars were unable to do much to slow down the Aurora attack as a 30-point quarter from the Spartans sent the game to the fourth with Dominican trailing 76-45.

The Aurora led held firm around 25-30 points in the first half of the final frame before Coach Rivas decided to get his bench players some playoff experience in the final five minutes of action as Dominican would end up falling 101-61 to end its 2021 season 3-4 overall.

The shooting percentages were fairly close as Dominican ended up outshooting Aurora 46.4%-44.3% but the Spartans gained a distinct advantage from long-range, draining 18-of-36 attempts from deep.

The other glaring difference in the ballgame was turnovers as Dominican committed 27 to Aurora's 10. 

"This isn't the way I envisioned our season ending but what a journey it's been," said Head Coach Antonio Rivas. "There's not another group of players and coaches that I would have rather gone through this season with. The future of this program is bright and we will bounce back and be better because of this experience. I loved our fight and effort all season long and that is something we can definitely build upon."