HICKORY, N.C. --- Shynese Whitener scored in double figures for the eighth-straight game, but the Tusculum College women's basketball team was defeated by Lenoir-Rhyne 83-60 on Saturday afternoon in South Atlantic Conference action from Hickory, North Carolina.

The Pioneers fall to 6-16 overall and 6-13 in the SAC, while the Bears improve to 9-15 overall and 8-12 in the conference, helping their cause in the race for one of the final spots in next month's SAC Tournament.

Whitener tallied a team-high 14 points and dished out five assists. Senior guard Brianna Mitchell tallied 12 points while sophomore guard Maelyn Cutshaw had 11. Senior guard Blakeley Burleson and senior forward Rainey Story each scored nine points while Kristen McMillon had a team-high 8 rebounds.

The Pioneers opened the game hot by hitting their first five field goal attempts and jumping out to a 12-4 lead three minutes into the contest. Burleson had two triples during the stretch and the TC defense forced five missed shots by the Bears. However LR answered with a 10-2 run to knot the game at 14-14 at the 13:05 mark.

The Bears continued their run and scored the next three points to take their first lead of the game at 17-14. A few minutes later, Story completed a three-point-play to tie the game at 19, but Tusculum was held scoreless for the next five minutes of the game. LR tallied 10 points during the stretch and held a 29-19 lead with 5:44 to play in the first half. The Pioneers missed five field goals during the scoring drought while turning the ball over once.

Whitener finally stopped the bleeding with a layup to cut the lead back to eight. After the Bears scored the next four points, Mitchell nailed a triple to trim the deficit to 33-24, but LR responded with five-straight points to take its biggest lead of the opening frame at 38-24 at the 3:15 mark.

Story hit a layup with just under three minutes before halftime, but that was the final points of the half for TC. Fortunately for the Pioneers, the Bears only scored one more basket as well in the final three minutes, but they took a 40-26 lead into the beak.

It was all Lenoir-Rhyne in the second half. TC used a quick 4-0 spurt to cut the deficit to 13 six minutes into the second frame. However, the Bears scored seven unanswered points to take its first 20-point advantage of the game at 58-38 with 12:55 to play. TC was able to only come within 16 points of the lead for the remainder of the contest and LR cruised to the 23-point victory.

Four players scored in double figures for LR led by a game-high 21 points from Jenni Gust. Jazmine Charles scored 19 points while Brooke Robinson and Morgan Cooper each had a double-double. Robinson tallied 17 and 11 points rebounds while Cooper compiled 11 points and pulled down 10 rebounds.

The Bears shot a respectable 46 percent from the field on 27-of-59 shooting while the Pioneers were just 21-of-60 from the floor, which came to 35 percent shooting. LR out-rebounded TC 51-31, including a 17-9 advantage in offensive boards. Each team turned the ball over 19 times, however the Bears scored 32 points off those miscues compared to just nine by the Pioneers.

Tusculum has a short turnaround before traveling across the mountain to take on Mars Hill University on Monday (Feb. 23) at 6 p.m. The game was rescheduled from February 18th due to the show and ice storm that hit the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina areas last week.