Box Score ST. PAUL – Led by a career-high performance from Chanel Madson (Westbrook, Minn./Westbrook-Walnut Grove) and three other scorers in double digits, the University of Northwestern women's basketball team made it an undefeated opening weekend on Saturday with a 79-60 victory over the University of Wisconsin-Stout. Four different Eagles scored at least 12 points, while Madson poured on the offense with 27 points to lead the team to its second consecutive victory in as many days.  

UNW jumped out to an early lead, putting 10 tallies on the board after a pair of buckets from Madson followed by two triples from Courtney Cunard (Missouri Valley, Iowa/Missouri Valley) and Mollie Sir (Cresco, Iowa/Crestwood) 3:27 into the ballgame. The margin continued to hold strong throughout the remainder of the half, extending to as much as 12 points with 7:51 on the clock thanks to a trey from Madson.

The Eagles withstood a run from the Blue Devils who cut UNW's security down to four points, but a Jessica Fife (Maple Grove, Minn./Osseo) put-in combined with Cunard's shot in the paint would give the home team a 32-25 lead at intermission.

The second half actually proved to be more successful than the first in terms of offensive production on the Purple and Gold's end of the floor. The squad secured a 55.6 mark from the floor en route to 47 points in the final 20 minutes of action.

Queue the 17:00 minute timestamp, and Northwestern began a 11-1 run to force its lead up to 20 points courtesy of offensive action from four different players in an Eagle uniform. The team's largest margin would come with 5:53 left to play after yet another Madson bucket, but UW-Stout kept fighting and whittled the final score down to 79-60 as the buzzer sounded.

Madson's 27 points was a career high for the junior, while Fife surpassed 10 rebounds for the second consecutive contest to reach a 14-14 double-double. Sir and Cunard rounded out the high scorers for the home team on the scoreboard with 18 and 12 respectively, while Kim Campbell (Bloomington, Minn./Kennedy) brought in 8 rebounds in 19 minutes of action.  As a collective group, UNW's blistering second half allowed them to post a 44.4% result from the field and a 38.7 tally from three-point land.

With Sir's sixth point of the evening, the senior reached the 1,000-point mark of her career. The three-year starter headed into the weekend's games with a total of 970 career points, tallying 24 on Friday and another 18 on Saturday to achieve the career mark. 


With two opening wins under its belt, UNW has now notched the best start to its season in Head Coach Aaron Kahl's four-year tenure. Northwestern wil nowl hit the practice court on Monday and will quickly return to the Ericksen Center game floor for a 5:30 p.m. matchup versus Macalester College on Tuesday night.