JACKSON, Mo. -- For three quarters it was a grind-it-out battle. Perhaps not pretty, but certainly a struggle worthy of the top of the SEMO Conference.
Then the Saxony Lutheran girls basketball team announced its status as league front-runner.
Locked in a three-point game with Poplar Bluff going into the fourth quarter, the Crusaders absolutely blistered the visiting Mules down the stretch, opening the final period on a 17-0 run and rolling to a 69-38 win in a battle between the only remaining undefeated teams in the SEMO Conference on Monday night in Jackson.
Now only one remains.
Saxony Lutheran (18-3, 5-0 SEMO) outscored Poplar Bluff (14-7, 4-1) 33-5 in the fourth quarter to, at least for the moment, perch atop the conference standings and rebound from a loss to Jefferson City on Saturday.
"This is a big conference win. Both of us were undefeated," Saxony Lutheran coach Sam Sides said. "I told them, 'This is a big game at home. We've got to forget about Saturday.' We didn't even play that bad Saturday.
"... I tried to tell them you can play good and still lose and you can play bad and still win."
Saxony Lutheran struggled to slow Poplar Bluff in the first quarter, as the Mules opened took a 20-17 lead thanks to 13 points from Kylie Bess in the first quarter. But Bess scored only eight more points the rest of the game and the visitors scored only 18 points in the final three quarters, including a scoreless second quarter.
"Part of that is they went man and started spreading us out and we spread the ball out a little bit, we just had a little bit of a hard time attacking," Poplar Bluff coach John David Pattillo said. "It was kind of a shortened (second) quarter, so there wasn't just a whole lot going on. They didn't score a lot either ... just kind of a dead quarter. And we came out the third quarter and handled ourselves."
Poplar Bluff remained as close as one point with 14 seconds remaining in the third quarter, but watched things quickly get out of hand. The visitors turned the ball over as many times in the fourth quarter -- eight -- as the Crusaders did all game. Poplar Bluff finished with 19 total turnovers.
Bess finished with 21 points for the Mules, who only got limited contributions from senior Doni Everts after she twice rolled her ankle.
"We're just young," Pattillo said. "Doni, our senior, she's our rock inside and she goes down and that made it tough on us. You're replacing a senior with a couple freshmen. The big thing was you could tell we reacted like freshmen and sophomores because we got our head down. As soon as we turned it over a few times we got to getting our head down. We're at that point where we can play pretty well, we can go into bad spurts and we're just trying to get it all figured out and hopefully be ready for district tournament time."
Addison Beussink finished with 21 points, 15 rebounds, three assists and three steals for Saxony Lutheran, including 11 of her team's 19 points through the middle two quarters.
"She's improved a bunch from last year. Last year she was more passive; this year she attacks the glass," Sides said. "For a while there, she was the only one keeping us in the game because she was scoring and getting rebounds and getting fouls."
Masyn McWilliams finished with 17 points, eight rebounds and five assists for the Crusaders, while Emma Brune added 14 points.
Saxony Lutheran finished 28 of 52 (53.8 percent) from the floor, including 13 of 17 (76.5 percent) in the decisive fourth quarter.
Poplar Bluff was 15 of 32 (46.9 percent) from the field.
"Sometimes you've got to be patient on defense too, and I think we weren't," Sides said. "We tried to make things happen and they handled the ball well enough that we end up fouling them, and we can't do that.
"Second half, I think we did a good job of keeping the ball out of the middle and we helped double team (Bess) a lot better and kept our hands up. Something simple, really. Before, we just weren't moving."
Saxony Lutheran's defensive press created some issues for the visitors early, but as Poplar Bluff adjusted it got open looks at the basket. The result was a 11-5 mid-quarter run for the Mules, which put them up by as many as five points and saw them take a 20-17 edge out of the first period.
Bess hit her first five shots of the game, missing only on a desperation jumper at the buzzer.
Neither team scored for the first 5 minutes, 5 seconds of the second quarter, until Beussink notched Saxony Lutheran's first six points of the period, including a layup at the 2:18 mark that gave her side a 21-20 lead. As the Mules failed to put the ball through the basket even once in the quarter, the hosts took a 25-20 lead into halftime.
Katie Pattillo hit a 3-pointer with 1:33 left in the third quarter and Bess followed with a pair of free throws to cut Saxony Lutheran's lead to a point, 34-33, with 14 seconds left, but Callie Brown layed the ball in just before the buzzer for the Crusaders, and then the fourth quarter happened.
"We were attacking the basket, they were calling fouls, and then all of a sudden we started turning it over a little bit against the press and our young ones kind imploded and we threw it around," coach Pattillo said. "You just can't do that against [Saxony Lutheran] because they're really good. They're a really good basketball team."
The Mules didn't score a point during the first 3:23 of the final quarter, and this time the hosts took advantage.
McWilliams dropped in a layup with 4:45 on the clock to push Saxony Lutheran's lead to 20 points, 53-33, and the rest was just superficial. McWilliams scored 12 points in the final eight minutes of the game.
"We did a real good job, I thought, of interior passing," Sides said. "... We did a good job of hitting the cutters and we got some easy shots by doing that -- by, again, moving more as a team. We ended up cracking it open just by doing that."
Saxony Lutheran is back on the court at non-conference rival Oran on Wednesday. The Crusaders have two games left in conference play: hosting Kennett on Thursday before a matchup at rival Jackson looms large Feb. 12.