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St. Joseph, Minn. – After the sweet revenge of a 69-63 win over Concordia tonight, (Feb. 6) the Saint Benedict basketball team moves up to a shared No. 1 spot in the MIAC standings.

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CSB now holds a first place tie with the Cobbers, who got the win in the two team's first meeting in Moorhead, Minn. a month ago. Since then, though, the Blazers have won 10 straight games.

Saint Benedict improves to 18-4 as Concordia falls to 17-5, while both teams share a 16-3 record at the top of the conference.

The Blazers fought hard against a tough Cobber team, keeping it close the entire game.  After scoring first, the Cobbers held the early lead, and kept it the rest of the first half. The Cobbers never led by more than five points until the last three minutes of the half, when they went up 31-23. The Blazers were able to close the gap late, however, finishing the first half down by a score of 33-29.

In the second half, the Blazers came out fast and tied the game after only one minute. The Cobbers, though, then went on a 6-to-3 run to take the lead right back.  After countering with a 7-to-0 run, the Blazers were finally on top for good with a score of 47-42 with 10:54 left to play.

The Blazers retained the lead for the rest of the game and extended it to eight points a score of 58-50 with just over four minutes left. The Blazers held off the Cobbers for the rest of the game, making 5-of-6 free throws in the final 30 seconds to seal the win.

Brianna Barrett led the Blazers in scoring tonight, racking up 21 points by the end of the game. Her 21 is a new career-high and beat out her previous mark of 20, which she has reached three times this season. Barrett has scored at least 20 points in three of her last four games.

She also led the team in rebounds, along with Morgan Dale, who both racked up eight. Whitney Canton scored another 17 points, adding four steals and seven rebounds to the Blazers' total of 32 on the night.

After going 2-of-4 at the free throw line in the first half, the Blazers pulled it together in the second, racking up 14 points at the charity stripe in the second half alone, going 14-of-17 with a free throw percentage of 82%.  The Blazers also improved their first half field goal percentage of 40%, to 50% in the second half.

Saint Benedict dominated Concordia under the basket, scoring almost double as many points in the paint. The Blazers finished off the night with 30 points underneath, compared to the Cobbers 16.

With three more regular season games to go and only one at home, the road doesn't get any easier, beginning at St. Thomas on Saturday, as the Tommies are just a game back in the standings.