Box Score NATCHITOCHES-- Keisha Lee's 18 points and the Northwestern State women's basketball team scored 24 points on 20 forced turnovers, keying the Lady Demons in a 71-49 win over Oral Roberts to give NSU the fourth seed and a first-round bye in the Southland Conference Tournament for the first time since 2005.

Winning for the fourth straight game, a season's best streak, NSU finished the regular season with an 18-12 record overall and an 11-7 conference mark. It's only the second time that NSU has reached 18 wins in the last 10 years and the firs ttime since 2005 NSU has had 11 conference wins. Oral Roberts, winless on the road this season, fell to 9-19 overall and 8-10 in Southland Conference play.

"It's just about getting better throughout the season. We like to break down the season into three pieces: the non-conference season, the conference season, and the postseason. I feel like we have progressed in the first two and now we're ready for the third," said co-head coach Brooke Stoehr.

"We love the progress they've made, but we're not satisfied with it yet," she said. "One thing with this group is that we're not OK with where we are. We can play even better and I'm excited about the energy we had today."

Northwestern State will play its first game of the tournament on Friday at 11 a.m. against the winner of the first-round Nicholls-Oral Roberts contest on Thursday.

NSU needed a win and a Nicholls loss to grab the fourth seed and first-round tournament bye, and just after halftime of the Lady Demons' game Texas A&M-Corpus Christi put away Nicholls, 59-55. Stoehr admitted she checked the score at halftime, but gave instructions not to have that outcome announced in the arena to keep her squad focused on ORU. The Lady Demons looked zoned in on the task at hand.

Lee led all scorers on seven made buckets on 14 tries, and was 2-of-5 from 3-point range. Freshman Kourtney Pennywell had 11 points and senior Trudy Armstead had 10 points. It was Armstead's 11^th straight career double-figure scoring game. She, Meredith Graf and Jasmine Bradley were recognized on Senior Day in pregame ceremonies.

The Lady Demons were down 17-12 with 12:06 to play in the first half, but NSU put together a 10-point run over the five minutes to grab a five-point lead.

Beatrice Attura started the run with two-made free throws followed by a Kourtney Pennywell jumper. Emily Spector scored the next two points on a layup that drew a foul. She made the and-one free throw. Janelle Perez finished off the run with a 3-pointer on an assist from Lee.

The Lady Demons were 25-of-53 (47.2 percent) from the field and 7-for-19 (36.8 percent) from 3-point range. Northwestern State forced the Golden Eagles into 20 turnovers and capitalized for 24 points. It only fumbled the ball 11 times for eight ORU points.

"I'm just proud of our kids today and we started the second half in a tremendous way," said Stoehr. "Not only did we knock down shots, but we got it in the short corner and really attacked the zone."

NSU knocked down 60 percent of its shots in the second half (15-25) and 50 percent (5-10) from 3-point range.

Christian Key led Oral Roberts with 12 points followed by Bernadett Balla, who had 10. The Golden Eagles hit 41 percent (21-51) of their shots from the field and five of their 18 3-point tries.

Northwestern State had one more rebound than Oral Roberts (32-31) and 11 more assists (21-10).

"It's fun to watch when we share the basketball. We are playing some great team basketball and very efficient with the ball. We've worked on a lot of fundamentals," said Stoehr. "We lead the league in assists-to-turnover ratio, and when you value the basketball you put yourself in position to win the game."

Lamar took the number one seed and Stephen F. Austin is the two seed. Central Arkansas, who entered the weekend one win away from a championship, tumbled to the three seed. Nicholls is the five seed, Corpus Christi is the six and McNeese is the seventh seed.