Box Score What started as a fairy tale, turned into a nightmare during the second half as Lancaster Bible shot a woeful, 1-of-24 from the field en route to a 56-51 loss to Eastern on Saturday at Horst Athletic Center.

After Chargers' sophomore Katy Stover had one of the best halves of basketball in program history with 21 points on 6-of-6 shooting from beyond the arc, Lancaster Bible turned right around and had one of the worst halves in program history during the second 20 minutes.

Stover's shooting energized not only the Lancaster Bible crowd, but the team as well as the Chargers jumped out to a double-digit lead for much of the first half. Lost in Stover's magical first half was the fact that she had six of LBC's 12 made shots in the opening 20 minutes. When the Eagles defended her better in the second half and clamped down on defense in general, the Chargers did little to respond.

Eastern cut the Chargers' lead to single-digits early in the second half and finally took a lead with 7:22 to play on a free throw by Meghan Nowak. Despite the Chargers' struggles, Eastern did very little to pull away as they had long offensive dry spells as well. 

The teams battled back and forth as the Chargers retook the lead, 51-50 with 1:15 to play on two free throws by Sarah Heilenman. Bethany Zimmerman put the Eagles in front for good about 30 second later with a put-back in the lane that gave Eastern a 52-51 lead. 

The Chargers (1-2) had one last chance, but Stover's three-point attempt would not go with eight seconds remaining and Nowak iced the game with one second to play with two free throws.

"We are still coming together as a team and we aren't a 40-minute team yet as today showed," Chargers Head Coach Doug Helsel said. "We had these letdowns during the first two games as well. There are times when we dominate and times where we get away from what we do well."

In addition to Stover's 21 points, fellow sophomore Aubrey Folger had nine points, nine rebounds and three blocks, while Sarah Heilenman added eight points and five boards. The loss was the Chargers' first at Horst Athletic Center since February 23, 2012 when Lancaster Bible lost to Valley Forge Christian in the NCCAA East Region Final. Lancaster Bible was a perfect, 16-0 last season at home and will look to get back to the .500 mark on Tuesday when they open NEAC play against Penn St. Abington.

"We are looking forward to starting the NEAC portion of our schedule," Helsel said. "We wanted to win today and there are certainly areas of our execution I am pretty disturbed by, but ultimately, we want to win the NEAC Championship and Tuesday's game is the first step in that direction."


Notes:
-The Chargers have actually had two halves in program history where they did not record a single field goal and they both happened in the same season. The Chargers did not score a single point in the first half during a game against Philadelphia College of the Bible during the 1991-92 season and closed the year with a 93-11 loss to Baptist Bible in which they were outscored, 46-1 in the second half.