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GRAND RAPIDS - The Calvin women's basketball team scored its first victory in MIAA play with an 83-58 win over Saint Mary's College on Thursday at Van Noord Arena.

Saint Mary's (4-6, 1-2 MIAA) jumped in front 11-0 in the opening minutes, as Calvin (6-2, 1-2 MIAA) missed its first nine shots until Gabby Timmer (Caledonia, Mich./South Christian) finally got the Knights on the board with a putback lay-up with 4:23 to play in the opening period. 

The Knights found their footing from there and finished the quarter on a 13-3 run to trail by one (14-13) after one period.

Calvin would take over from that point, out-scoring the Belles 23-12 in the second quarter to take a 36-26 halftime lead, and then putting the game away with a 30-6 run in the third quarter as it built the lead as high as 37 points in the second half en route to the win.

After Timmer led the team with eight first-half points, Sydney Cleary (Middleville, Mich./South Christian) erupted for 11 points in the third quarter, while Leah Harris scored eight on 3-4 shooting from the field. 

The lopsided score gave the Knights a chance to give minutes to a number of players, as 17 different Calvin players saw the court, with 13 of those 17 scoring points. The bench proved to be a big factor for the Knights as they out-scored the Belles' reserves 30-17 for the game. Allie Mayes (East Lansing, Mich./East Lansing) led the Calvin reserves with seven points, while Sophie Sensenig (Grayslake, Ill./Westlake Christian) and Emma Witte (Grand Rapids, Mich./Grand Rapids Christian) each added six points.

Cleary finished with a game-high 16 points to lead the Knights, while Harris added 14. Timmer recorded her sixth double-double of the season with 12 points and 11 rebounds, and also blocked four shots to move into fourth place in program history with 175 blocks for her career.

COACH'S COMMENT: "We were playing hard (in the first quarter) and had some good shots we didn't make, and they made a couple threes," Calvin head coach Mark Christner said. "You don't want to spot 11 points or whatever it was, but we did a nice job of continuing to play. I don't think we got frazzled and just kept doing stuff we wanted to do on both ends of the floor, and that led to the quick turnaround. The end of the first quarter was good just to get it back to even. Then, I thought we did some things in transition (21 fast break points) we haven't been able to do in a little while because our players off the bench are really athletic."

NEXT UP: Calvin women's basketball returns to action on Saturday, December 17, when it travels to Olivet for a game scheduled to start at 3:00 PM.