The Lancaster Bible women's basketball team won its seventh straight game on Tuesday night as the Chargers overcame a halftime deficit and defeated Penn St. Abington, 78-70 in Abington, Pa. The Chargers are now 14-3 this season and 11-1 in North Eastern Athletic Conference play. Lancaster Bible holds a one game lead over Bryn Athyn in the NEAC South Division standings with eight games remaining in the regular season.

How it Happened: Penn St. Abington jumped out to an early 12-5 lead in the opening four minutes of the game, but Lancaster Bible responded with a 9-2 run and tied the game at 14-14 thanks to two free throws from Shanice Smith with 3:14 to play in the first quarter. The teams exchanged buckets in the remaining minutes of the 1st quarter until the Nittany Lions strung together seven of the quarter's final nine points to take a 24-20 lead after 10 minutes.

Lancaster Bible scored just two points in the first 3:15 of the second quarter and in the process fell behind by 10 at 32-22 after a layup from the Nittany Lions' Shayna Rodriguez. The Chargers battled to trim the deficit, but had little luck doing so as the Nittany Lions continued to make bucket after bucket and maintained their 10-point lead with 2:20 to play in the second quarter. Lancaster Bible finally put consecutive buckets together and used a late 7-0 run to cut Penn St. Abington's lead to three, before the Nittany Lions' Janaiah Elum hit a jumper with seven seconds left in the half.

In the third quarter, the Chargers began to take the game over and finally tied the game at 48-48 thanks to a layup from Kirsten Webster. Webster's layup was part of a 16-0 run by the Chargers over seven minutes of play as Lancaster Bible turned a 48-42 deficit into a 58-48 lead. Late buckets by Penn St. Abington helped them cut the Chargers' lead to seven, 60-53, after three quarters of play.

Lancaster Bible maintained its lead for the entire fourth quarter, though the Nittany Lions cut their deficit to six with just over a minute to play. Senior Shanice Smith converted both of her free throws with 44 seconds to play to restore the Chargers' eight-point lead, the same margin they would win by.

By the Numbers: Lancaster Bible shot 32-of-77 (41.6 percent) from the floor...The Chargers held a 42-32 rebounding advantage, including a 21-6 edge on the offensive glass...Junior Krissy Pennell led the Chargers with 20 points, a new career-high, and added five rebounds, five steals and four assists...Senior Aubrey Folger finished with 19 points and 12 rebounds...Kirsten Webster had 16 points, two shy of her career-high, and also added four assists...Senior Shanice Smith had 12 points and 11 rebounds and needs just four points and five rebounds on Thursday to eclipse the 1,000-point and 1,000-rebound marks for her career...Senior Katy Stover was the fifth and final member of the team to score in double figures as she had 11 points.

The Coach Says: "We got off to a slow start and Abington was ready to play," Lancaster Bible Head CoachKatelyn Vanderhoff said. "They had a couple players go off early in the game and we struggled to finish on the offensive end. I thought we responded very well in the second half. We challenged the team to get the game tied with five minutes to go in the third quarter and to be leading going into the fourth. The team took that challenge and really stepped up."

On Pennell's season-high 20 points..."We've challenged Krissy to look for her shot more and she has started to do so, which is making her more of a threat offensively and making our offense more well-rounded," Vanderhoff said. 

On Webster's solid play..."Kirsten definitely stepped up in the third and fourth quarters tonight," Vanderhoff said. "She was the spark we needed, brought energy and finished well inside the paint."

On Stover's defensive play..."Katy was fantastic on defense tonight," Vanderhoff said. "She held Elum to only seven points in the second half and completely took her out of the game."

Extra! Extra!: Lancaster Bible is now 10-5 all-time against Penn St. Abington...This is the fourth straight season the Chargers have had at least a seven-game winning streak.

Up Next: Lancaster Bible travels to Morristown, N.J. on Thursday night to take on St. Elizabeth at 7 p.m.