FORT WAYNE, Ind. – The No. 7-ranked Indiana Tech women's basketball team checked another box off in its historic season as they defeated No. 23-ranked Aquinas College, 57-41, on Monday evening inside the Schaefer Center to win the program's first-ever Wolverine-Hoosier Athletic Conference (WHAC) Tournament title and their first-ever conference tournament title. The tournament title gives the Warriors the clean sweep of the WHAC titles, the first time since 2017 that both titles have gone to the same team while Tech reached the 30-win plateau for the second straight season.
Kendall Knapke scored a team-high 12 points while grabbing six rebounds.
Rachel Bell added 11 points, five rebounds, seven assists and two steals while
Jenna Szostak chipped in nine points and two steals off the bench.
Bella Lozano-Dobbs added seven points, 10 rebounds and six assists.
Tech got out to a 7-0 run to begin the championship game as they led for all 40 minutes, with Knapke scoring all seven of the team's points and forcing the Saints to call a timeout three and a half minutes into the game. Aquinas came right back with four quick points, but the Warriors countered with an 11-2 spurt to extend their lead to 18-6 with just over two minutes remaining in the period. Szostak finished the quarter with six points as she nailed her second of three triples with one just before the buzzer to make it 23-11.
A triple from Lozano-Dobbs made it a 13-point game with 6:59 to play in the opening half while
Kyra Whitaker extended Tech's lead to 14-points with 2:36 on the clock after nailing a three pointer. The Saints outscored the Warriors 13-12 in the period, but the top-seeded team in the tournament held a 35-24 lead at the end of 20 minutes.
Aquinas came out with back-to-back triples to begin the third quarter to cut the deficit down to 35-30 just 60 seconds into the half, but a 7-2 run put the hosts back up by 10 with 2:27 to play in the period.
After shooting just 27.3% from the floor in the third quarter, Tech rebounded with a 5-11 (45.5%) performance in the final period of regulation and limited the Saints to just 2-10 shooting from the field. The Saints had cut the deficit down to five points with just under seven minutes to play, but Lozano-Dobbs found her senior classmate Knapke wide up at the top of the arc with the shot clock expiring and the career-leading in games played at Tech hit nothing but net to push the lead back up to eight points and bringing the Schaefer Center to its feet. The Warriors scored the final 11 points of the game while they didn't allow Aquinas to score in the final six minutes and 56 seconds of the championship.
Tech (30-3) now turns its attention to the NAIA Division II National Championship, set for March 6-12 in Sioux City, Iowa. The Warriors will find out their first round opponent on Wednesday, February 27 with the NAIA Selection, which will air at 7 p.m. EST on the NAIA's Facebook page.
