The University of Northern Iowa women’s basketball team traveled to Akron, Ohio to take on the Akron Zips Tuesday morning.  

The Panthers, coming off of a win against Tulsa, had control of the game early but eventually fell 82-73 to the Zips.  

UNI opened up a 12-point lead halfway through the opening half.  The Zips, however, began to chip away at the Panther lead.  Akron scored 12 points off of seven Panther turnovers and capped the first half off with an 8-0 run to lock the game up at 33-33 at the break.  

Junior forward Jen Keitel went into the locker room with a team-high 11 points and seven rebounds.  

Akron quickly went to work in the second half, building up an 11-point lead.  

Tanya Warren’s Panthers showed some resilience however, using a late run to get within two points, but Akron pushed the lead right back out to six and didn’t look back from there, pulling out an 82-73 victory over the visiting Panthers.

Five Panthers scored double digits in the losing effort.  Keitel led Northern Iowa with 19 points and 11 rebounds for the double, while Amber  Sorenson scored 13 points and pulled down eight rebounds.  Stephanie Davison had 12 points, Madison Weekly had 11 points and Brooke Brown rounded out the UNI double-digit scorers with 10 points while also dishing out six assists.  

Akron was led by Sina King’s game-high 27 points while teammates Anita Brown had 18 points and Kerri McMahan had 14 points.  Akron improves to 3-0 while UNI drops to 1-1 on the season. 

The Panthers return to action Tuesday, Nov. 25 when they travel to Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City to take on 18-ranked Iowa Hawkeyes.