Lacy Stokes beats buzzer to lift Missouri State Lady Bears over Northern Iowa

Lacy Stokes lay on the ground with a soft smile as she threw her arms up in the air. You would have never guessed until her teammates jumped on top of her that she had just made a game-winning layup at the buzzer.

The standout Missouri State point guard was cold-blooded.

"We drew up a play, we executed and it went in," Stokes said after the game with the same soft smile. "That's all you could ask for at the end of the day."

The Mount Vernon star's heroics lifted the Lady Bears to a 54-52 win over Northern Iowa to begin Missouri Valley Conference play on Saturday afternoon at Great Southern Bank Arena.

Stokes scored six points in the game with none bigger than the last two after she drove to the basket and tossed the ball up at the backboard.

"She's been a catalyst for us all season and she just continues to get better," Lady Bears head coach Beth Cunningham said. "That was huge. It put an exclamation on the game. We've talked about being resilient and it was just a tremendous way to start conference play. That's huge momentum heading into the next weekend."

It wasn't the prettiest of games for the Lady Bears but they'll take it. Against a one-win team from an extremely difficult non-conference slate, Missouri State didn't claim its first lead of the game until a Kyrah Daniels 3 with 3:18 left.

The Lady Bears trailed by as many as 10 but kept chipping away until they tied the game for the first time with 7:38 remaining.

More: Now a Lady Bear, Mount Vernon's Lacy Stokes is still out to prove her doubters wrong

From then on, it was back and forth. Daniels and UNI standout Maya McDermott exchanged buckets to keep the game tied with about five seconds left. After that, Stokes got the ball and created a magical moment.

"I think my eyes were closed a little bit when I shot it," Stokes said. "When I got on the ground, I just started watching it go in and then all of a sudden there were bodies on top of me."

Missouri State was led by Kennedy Taylor's 13 points with Jade Masogayo adding 11. The Panthers got 19 out of McDermott with both teams finishing shooting 38%.

The Lady Bears, now 7-3 and winners of their last four, will host Valparaiso on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. before hosting Illinois Chicago on Saturday at 1 p.m.

Wyatt D. Wheeler is a reporter and columnist with the Springfield News-Leader. You can contact him at 417-371-6987, by email at wwheeler@news-leader.com or X at @WyattWheeler_NL. He's also the host of the weekly "Wyatt's World Podcast" on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other podcasting platforms

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Lacy Stokes beats buzzer in Missouri State Lady Bears win over UNI