BEREA, OHIO – The Baldwin Wallace University women's basketball team was defeated by Capital Universoty, 70-55, in an Ohio Athletic Conference game in the Rudolph Ursprung Gymnasium inside the Lou Higgins Center.

 
With its loss, BW drops to 10-7 overall and 5-5 in the OAC and ended a five-game winning streak. With its win, Capital is 12-5 overall and 7-3 in the OAC and has won two games in a row. Capital won 53-44 the first meeting this season on December 8, 2012 in Columbus. Capitral leads the all-time series, 46-22, but BW has won 22 of the past 36 meetings.
 
BW was led by senior two-time All-OAC guard Jessica Carpenter (North Canton/ Hoover) with 11 points. Senior forward Stacy Timmerman led the Crusaders in scoring with 20 points and eight rebounds. In addition to Timmerman for Capital, junior guard Cookie Geroski had 15 and freshman point guard Simone Gage had 14.
 
BW got off to an early, 3-0 lead at the 19:21 mark when junior All-OAC guard Jessica Lairson (Louisville) made a three-pointer. The Yellow Jackets outscored the Crusaders 13-7 to take a 16-7 lead with 13:17 left when freshman guard Alissa Munro (Mansfield/Lexington) canned a trey. The Crusaders returned the favor by outscoring BW 16-6 to take its first lead of the game at 23-22 with 5:05 left when Gage hit a jumper in the lane.

BW retook the lead at 24-23 when junior forward Lexi Rohrbach (Tiffin/ Columbian) made a short jumper at 4:48 and extended the run to 6-0 to lead 28-23 with 3:17 left when sophomore Laurel Thomas (Canton/Canton Central Catholic) made a short jumper.  Capital then went on a 7-0 run to retake the lead at 30-28 when freshman forward Kristin Reisinger made a jumper.

BW regained the advantage at 31-30 on a three-pointer by Carpenter with 30 seconds in the first stanza, but Geroski nailed a long jumper for Capital with 17 ticks left and the Crusaders gained a 32-31 lead heading into the locker room at the intermission.

In the second half, BW retook the lead at 33-32 at 19:40 when senior 4-year starting point guard Rachel Rossman (Olmsted Falls) made a layup. That began a string of six lead changes before Capital gained a 39-37 lead when Timmerman made one of two foul shots at 15:23.

The Capital lead grew to sixat 43-37 at 12:40 when Timmerman made a jumper.

The Crusaders extended their lead to 55-46 when Gage drove the lane at the end of a fastbreak with 6:03 remaining.  After BW cut the lead to 57-51 with 5:11 left on a Carpenter layup, but Capital scored 11 straight point to put the game away with a 17-point bulge at 68-51 with 1:06.

With her four assists today,  Rossman  now has 326 career assists and ranks fourth all-time in BW school history. Today she passed Danielle Spanski (1991-94), who was fourth with 325 career assists. Rossman also started her 97th straight game.

The BW women are back in action on Wednesday, January 23 when they host No.8-ranked Ohio Northern University in the ONU Sports Center at 7:30 p.m.
  
FOR MORE BW SPORTS INFORMATION, please contact Sports Information Director Kevin Ruple by telephone at 440-826-2327 and e-mail at kruple@bw.edu or Assistant SID Jeff Miller by phone at 440-826-2780 and email at jefmille@bw.edu. Fans can access the latest BW athletics information at www.bwyellowjackets.com and we invite you to join us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bwyellowjackets and Twitter at http://twitter.com/bwathletics.

**Photo Courtesy of Mark Selmek