St. David's, PA (January 3, 2018) - Junior Leandra Sterner (Northampton, PA) and senior Kaitlin Kelly (Newtown, PA) combined to hit 10 3's and the DeSales University women's basketball team shot 48.2 percent from the field opening the MAC Freedom season with a 76-68 win at Eastern University on Wednesday evening.

Sterner finished with a team-high 19 points, hitting four 3's, while Kelly netted 18 points and shot 6-for-9 from deep in the win.  Junior Morgan Birmelin (Honesdale, PA) stuffed the stat sheet once again with another double-double of 11 points and 11 assists, while adding six rebounds and five steals.

EU (3-8, 0-1 MAC Freedom) got a game-high 23 points from Amanda Riiff, 14 points from Regie Robinson, and 13 points from Taylor Price in the loss.

DSU got off to a slow start on Wednesday hitting just 5-for-16 in the first quarter as Eastern was the hot shooting team over the first 10 minutes taking a 21-13 lead.  

DeSales turned up the defensive pressure in the second quarter and opened the next 10 minutes with a 21-7 over the first eight minutes to take a 34-28 lead.  Sterner led the charge with three triples during the spurt as the Bulldogs went into the halftime locker room with a 41-33 lead after a three from Kelly with five seconds left.

Kelly hit three more treys in the third quarter as DSU slowly built a 15-point lead with just over two minutes left in the stanza before five straight points from EU made it a 10-point game entering the final period.

It was a nine-point DeSales lead at the 5:50 mark when EU scored six straight points to pull within three at the 2:39 mark.  Sterner answered the run with a short pull-up jumper on the next possession and after the Eagles scored again, Sterner hit a driving lay-up to put DSU back up five (70-65) with 1:50 to go.

A Birmelin steal on the other end gave possession back to the Bulldogs and sophomore Molly Jansco (Newfoundland, PA) put the exclamation point on the win with a nice putback of her own miss giving DeSales a 72-65 lead with 1:04 left and Birmelin iced it from the line hitting 4-for-4 from the charity stripe over the final 60 seconds.

The Bulldogs were 10-for-24 (41.7%) from outside the arc and saw its bench out-score Eastern's, 21-0, in the win.  DSU won the battle on the boards, 32-27, and had more assists (17) than turnovers (15).

DSU is back in action on Saturday when they host Delaware Valley University in a MAC Freedom game set to begin at 1:00 pm in Billera Hall.