MILLERSVILLE, Pa. — Efficient scoring nights from Makiah Shaw and Morgan Mahoney paired with the most dominant rebounding effort of the season powered the Millersville Marauders to a 68–51 victory over the Bloomsburg Huskies on Wednesday evening.

Millersville shot 50% from the field for the game and settled in early, canning 9-of-17 attempts in the first quarter en route to a 22–12 lead at the end of the period. Kali March had eight points including two threes, Sophia Elstone had all six of her points, and Shaw poured in four over those first 10 minutes. The Marauder offense was in control throughout and tallied 17 assists, something that was on head coach Kira Mowen's mind when she spoke postgame.

"We did a great job of distributing the ball tonight," Mowen said postgame. We has multiple people with more than one assist: Kali had seven, Brenna had four, and Morgan had three, and that's just a tribute to our team. We're passing the ball, we're sharing it well–we had three people in double figures. I thought we did an exceptional job of working the ball around and running through our offensive sets while also taking care of it and trying to keep our turnovers low."

That's the fifth most assists in a game for the 'Ville this season; three of their top five performances in terms of dimes have come in the last four games. Their magic number for the season is 13; the Marauders are 12–1 when tallying more than 13 assists and 3–9 when failing to reach that mark.

Another area where the victors flourished was on the glass. They grabbed 43 rebounds for the game while allowing a season-low 24 to the Huskies. 14 of those boards were of the offensive variety compared to just eight for the visitors. Millersville had an even bigger advantage in that category (10–2) at half, a major factor in its 30–24 lead at the break.

"When we were up at half, we had taken ten more shots than them," Mowen said postgame.  "I kept imploring that if you keep crashing the boards, you'll get some easy looks. I thought we started off the game with some great offensive rebounds to easy putbacks."

In the Jan. 8 game between these two teams, Bloomsburg won 73–51, and the Huskies shot an astonishing 57.1% (12-of-23) from three. That's the highest percentage a Marauder opponent has shot from three in Mowen's year-and-a-half tenure at the helm. In this game, they were held to just 4-of-13 (30.8%) from beyond the arc. Mowen said that defending the perimeter was "absolutely" a focus heading into this game.

"Bloomsburg's a well-coached team," Mowen said postgame. "They shoot the ball extremely well, and when we were up there on their home floor, they hit shots. I think they had more than ten three-pointers. So to hold them tonight to under five three-pointers, that was a goal (of ours); we held them to four. I thought we did a great job of defending the three-point line tonight while also making sure that we protected the paint."

Shaw tallied a game-high 18 points on 9-of-13 from the field, the sixth straight game the senior has reached double figures. Mahoney was one short of matching a season-high with 16 points and Brenna Ortwein finished with a team-best 10 rebounds for the second straight game.  

This was the Marauders' third straight game at home after having a road-laden schedule for the first half of PSAC East play. It's also part of a larger stretch of five of six home games to end the season. They will close out the homestand against first-place Lock Haven on Saturday, Feb. 22. That contest is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m.