Women's basketball travels to Upper Iowa, Winona State

ST. CLOUD, MINN. - The St. Cloud State University women's basketball team is nearly at the midpoint of the 2021-22 Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference (NSIC) season. After playing some of their best basketball at home last weekend, the (RV) Huskies will hit the road for the first time in the new year, as they travel to take on Upper Iowa and Winona State this Friday and Saturday.

St. Cloud State is coming off a big weekend of NSIC play, as the Huskies earned two key wins over the top teams in the South Division. After falling behind by 16 points in the second quarter, St. Cloud State rallied to beat Concordia-St. Paul 73-69 before taking down (RV) Minnesota State 66-52 on Saturday. The sweep extended the Huskies current win streak to four games, and the team is now 11-2 overall and 9-1 in NSIC play.

Friday's tip off in Fayette, Iowa is scheduled for 7:30 p.m., while the game in Winona, Minnesota is scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday. Live stats will be available for both contests, as will live video streams on the NSIC Network. Score updates will also be made to the team's twitter account (@SCSUHUSKIES_WBB).

Here are the five things to know before this weekend's tip off:

21.5/3.5/2.5/1.0 - No, those aren't latitude and longitude coordinates. Those are Tori Wortz (Hutchinson, Minn. / Hutchinson) numbers from the series against Concordia-St. Paul and Minnesota State. The fifth year senior averaged 21.5 points, 3.5 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.0 steals against the two opponents, and she shot .552 (16-29) from the floor, including a 6-14 (.429) clip from three point range. Wortz scored 18 points in the Huskies comeback win over the Golden Bears, scoring the go-ahead layup at 1:39 in the fourth quarter. She then tallied a season-high 25 points in the 66-52 win over the Mavericks, shooting 9-16 from the floor and 5-10 from beyond the arc.

17/12 - Wortz wasn't the only Husky putting up big numbers over the weekend. In the team's win over Concordia-St. Paul, Kelsey Peschel (Sauk Centre, Minn./ Sauk Centre) scored zero points but was one of the most efficient players on the court. The senior guard wracked up a plus/minus of +17, including a +11 mark in the third quarter. Peschel, along with Wortz, Brehna Evans (De Pere, Wis. / West De Pere), Nikki Kilboten (Eau Claire, Wis. / Eau Claire North) and Erin Navratil (Albany, Minn. / Albany) were an extremely efficient quintet with a +12 score differential when all on the court together.

17-1 - St. Cloud State was 16-0 entering last season's two-game showdown against Upper Iowa. The Peacocks, though, had different ideas from the Huskies in the season opener. Despite outsourcing Upper Iowa 57-48 through the first three quarters, St. Cloud State dropped its season opener to Upper Iowa 75-70 in overtime, the team's first loss to the Peacocks in program history. The Huskies rallied the next day with a resounding 66-50 win over the visitors, improving to 17-1 all-time against Upper Iowa.

44 - Saturday will mark the 44th meeting between St. Cloud State and Winona State since the series first began back in 1969. In that time, the Huskies are 26-19 all-time against the Warriors but are 3-7 in their last 10 meetings. St. Cloud State is 2-1 in the last three meetings, averaging 65.0 points in both victories.

177 - The Huskies are one of the top defensive teams in the NSIC and Division II. This is no secret. The key to St. Cloud State's success, though, may be how clean the team plays defense. The Huskies have committed just 177 fouls through 12 games this season, the fewest committed fouls in the NSIC this season. The team is additionally only committing roughly 12.6 turnovers per game while forcing 16.00.