The UW-Superior women's basketball fully realized the challenge staring them in the face Saturday afternoon.

Not only were the Yellowjackets attempting to rebound from a frustrating loss to UW-Eau Claire on Wednesday evening, they were facing one of the nation's best teams in the eighth-ranked UW-Stevens Point Pointers.

As it turned out, the challenge proved to be too much as the Pointers pulled midway through the first half before going to post an 86-63 win over the Yellowjackets at Mertz Mortorelli Gymnasium.

The Yellowjackets (6-10 overall, 0-7 WIAC) only trailed 8-6 less than four minutes into the game following two early free throws from senior Kelsey Thingvold (Crystal, Minn.).

But the Pointers (14-2, 7-0) would begin to expand their advantage, going on a 12-0 run to up their lead from 14-9 with just over 13 minutes left in the first half to 26-9 with over eight minutes showing on the clock.

After taking a 42-21 lead at the intermission, the pointers continued to surge in the second half, taking their largest lead of the afternoon at 70-46 with over seven minutes left in the game.

From there, the closest the Yellowjackets would get would be 73-57 on a layup by Hailey Hart (Osseo, Wis.) with les than five minutes remaining in regulation.

Offensively, the Yellowjackets were led by Thingvold's 20 points while Connie Urmanski (Edgar, Minn.) added 13 points for UW-Superior.

The Pointers were paced by Britta Petersen with 21 points on 10-of-15 shooting.  Ashley Averkamp and Myranda Tyler added 12 points for UW-Stevens Point as well.

The Yellowjackets return to action Wednesday when they travel to UW-Stout.