GALESBURG, Illinois—The Knox College Prairie Fire women's basketball team defeated the Beloit College Buccaneers by a final score of 69-56. The Prairie Fire used a tough paint presence to pull down lots of rebounds and put up enough points in the paint to overpower the Buccaneer defenders. The victory moved Knox up to a 7-4 record in conference and a 10-8 record overall, good for fourth in the Midwest Conference.
 
The Prairie Fire shot off to an early lead in the first quarter, using a three-pointer by Karlie Thorn off the opening tip-off, and from there they never relinquished their lead. Knox on the offensive side used the deadly combination of Thorn and Jarrelyn McCall to slice up the Beloit defense. Thorn and McCall combined for 22 first half points, with McCall pulling in seven rebounds. On the defensive end, the Prairie Fire limited the Buccaneers to just 37.5% from the field, and overall refrained from fouling them very much. Knox also had eight steals and was very pesky defensively. As a result, Knox entered the break up 16 points.
 
In the second half, Knox kept up the pressure defensively while lowering the intensity offensively. Kyra Huffman led the Prairie Fire in the second half, scoring seven points on 2-of-3 shooting and also grabbing seven rebounds. Defensively, the rebounding advantage and paint presence for Knox proved to be too great for Beloit to match. This limited Beloit to just 24 second half points, with 16 of those coming from Candace Cunningham. Knox led comfortably throughout the second half due to this, and won the game by 13 points.
 
The stars of the game for Knox were Karlie Thorn, who put up an impressive 18 points up on 14 shots, Jarrelyn McCall, who scored 15 points and grabbed nine rebounds, and Kyra Huffman, who put up a double-double of 13 points and 11 rebounds. Shanelle Borth also impressed for the Prairie Fire off the bench, grabbing 11 rebounds and being a strong defensive presence.

"That was a good win for us, but we have another big one tomorrow," said head coach Emily Cline. "We need to bring the same intensity for another 40 minutes to finish off the weekend."
 
Knox's next game is tomorrow at home against Lake College at 1:00 p.m.