NORTHFIELD, Minn. – The St. Olaf College women's basketball team dropped a tightly-contested game to Concordia-Moorhead by a 60-57 margin in Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) play on Saturday afternoon at Skoglund Center.

In a game neither team led by more than six points, Concordia (8-5, 3-3 MIAC) overcame a six-point deficit in the fourth quarter to outlast St. Olaf (6-7, 0-6 MIAC) behind a combined 43 points from Makayla Anderson and Carlee Sieben. All four quarters of the game had scoring differentials of one or two points.

Sophomore Chloee Smith posted her fourth 20-point performance of the season for the Oles, leading the team with 20 points on 9-for-14 shooting to go with nine rebounds, three assists, and two blocks. Senior Sophia Kormann was the only other Ole in double figures with 10 points, while sophomore Bree Wilkerson added eight points. Wilkerson and senior Sarah Tangen both hit a pair of three-pointers for St. Olaf.

Anderson scored a game-high 20 points on 11-for-17 shooting and pulled down a game-high 10 rebounds for Concordia on an afternoon where she reached the 1,000-point mark for her career. Sieben shot 7-for-16 from the field on her way to 19 points, while Greta Tollefson tallied 10 points and eight rebounds for the Cobbers.

Anderson knocked down all four of her field goals in the opening quarter to help Concordia to a 16-14 lead after 10 minutes. Tangen provided a spark off the bench with two three-pointers in the quarter for St. Olaf before Sieben hit one from long range in the closing seconds to put the Cobbers back on top.

The second quarter featured eight lead changes and concluded with Concordia taking a 29-28 lead into the locker room after closing the half on a mini 4-0 run. St. Olaf led for over six minutes in the quarter thanks, in part, to five points from senior Ziling Zhen but was held scoreless over the final 2:49, as the Cobbers reclaimed the narrowest of leads.

Concordia used a 6-0 run midway through the third quarter to build its largest lead of the game at 39-33, but St. Olaf answered by scoring the next six points while holding the Cobbers scoreless for over five minutes. Alexa Snesrud hit a layup in the final seconds of the quarter to send Concordia into the fourth with a 41-39 lead.

St. Olaf opened the fourth quarter on an 8-0 run that included a three-pointer by Wilkerson and a three-point play by Smith to grab its largest lead of the game at 47-41 with 7:08 to go. The Cobbers built up a 56-51 lead inside the final three minutes after back-to-back buckets by Anderson, but the Oles answered layups by Smith and Wilkerson to get within a point with 52 seconds left.

After Anderson drained a pair of free throws on the next possession, Kormann made a diving layup with four seconds to play to get it back to a one-point game, but Tollefson went 2-for-2 at the line with 1.0 seconds left. St. Olaf advanced the ball into the front court with a timeout but came up empty on a desperation three-pointer at the buzzer.

The Oles will be back at Skoglund Center on Wednesday, Jan. 15 in a 7:30 p.m. start against Hamline University.