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Center Valley, PA (January 11, 2012) – The DeSales University women's basketball team shot just 31.3 percent and committed a season-high 32 turnovers falling to Freedom Conference rival King's College, 63-56, in a Freedom Conference game on Wednesday evening in Billera Hall.

The Bulldogs (7-7, 2-1 Freedom) drop their first Freedom game of the season in the loss.  DSU shot just 27.3 percent in the first half and missed its first 14 shots of the second half before finishing the game hitting 12 of its last 20 attempts.

King's (10-3, 3-0 Freedom) wasn't much better from the field, shooting 36.2 percent, but was good enough, slowly building as much as a 10-point lead in the second half before holding off a late Bulldog rally.

Freshman Alex Suk was the lone Bulldog in double digits with 10 points, all of which came in the first half.  Senior Cherelle Simmons played a strong second half and finished with eight points, 12 rebounds, and three blocked shots to become DSU's all-time leader in blocked shots with 135, passing Jeanne Herbert.  Sophomore Sondrine Glovas entered the game averaging 17.0 points per game, but scored just seven in the loss.

King's had four players reach double digits including Samantha Simcox with 14 points and seven rebounds.  Marissa Manning added 13 points and seven boards, Celia Rader finished with 11 points, and Paige Carlin added 10 points in the win.

King's raced out to a 9-0 lead as DeSales missed its first eight shots of the game, but used a 9-2 run after that to pull within 11-9 at the 13:35 on back-to-back three-pointers from sophomore Faith Gilbert.  The two teams battled back and forth the rest of the half with the Lady Monarchs extending a one-point lead (21-20) into a four-point halftime advantage at the break (29-25).

In the second half, DSU went even colder, missing its first 14 shots, but King's was almost equally as cold offensively and only managed to increase its four-point halftime lead up to 10 points over the first seven minutes (36-26).

DeSales started to chip away and after still trailing by 10 (44-34), used an 11-2 run over the next 3:27 to pull within one, 46-45, with 5:18 left to play.  Simmons keyed the run with six points and junior Taylor Greene hit a three-pointer during the spurt.

King's quickly answered with six straight points including a back-breaking three from Rader at the 3;28 mark to increase its lead to seven points and the Bulldogs were never able to any closer than five the rest of the way.

DeSales will look to correct things over the next few days before traveling to Delaware Valley College for another important early season Freedom Conference game on the road beginning at 1:00 pm.