St. John’s junior Emilie Fischbach shoots over Marion Local’s Megan Kuether and drains a triple for her 7th point Thursday night at Arnzen Gymnasium. However, the visiting Lady Flyers ran off a 27-point MAC victory.

The Lady Blue Jays (7-10, 1-6 MAC), minus leading scorer Jessica Recker, also lost senior classmate Casey Schnipke to injury late in the first half.

The Flyers (12-6, 4-3 MAC) took the lead from the start on a pair of throws by Allie Thobe just four ticks into the matchup. It was uphill from there. Thobe scored all seven of her points in the period, including a pair of hoop-and-harms, and Cadence Jacobs erupted for 10 of her game-high 15 in the same time span. The visitors used their size and strength inside, as well as their pressure defense, to force seven miscues (25 total) and shoot 9-of-15 from the floor (21-of-41 for the game, 0-of-7 beyond the arc, for 51.2%). When Megan Kuether hit a breakaway layup with 15 seconds showing, the Flyers’ lead grew to 25-9.

“We didn’t do a good job in the opening period of containing their dribble penetration. We also didn’t deal with their inside game very well, nor their transition game,” Jays mentor Dan J. Grothouse acknowledged. “They are so strong and physical inside and have some good guards. We did better the last three quarters but the bad quarter we tend to have was the first and we couldn’t recover.”