Junior Ilene Tsao scored a career-high 28 points but it wasn't enough as the Emory women's basketball team came up short at Carnegie Mellon Sunday afternoon. The Eagles saw their overall record slip to 12-12, 4-9 in the University Athletic Association, after dropping an 85-74 outcome to the Tartans who moved to 12-12 on the year, 3-10 in the league.

Tsao, who totaled 16 second-half points, ended the afternoon sinking a career-high 12 field goals in 23 attempts, including three-of-six from three-point range.  She also finished with a team-leading five assists.  Tsao's point total represented the high-water mark by an Emory player this season and tied the 16^th-highest individual game total in program history.

Freshman Dumebi Egbuna turned in a solid outing, posting a season-high tying 15 points, connecting on six-of-10 from the floor along with knocking down all three of her free throw opportunities.  Egbuna, who finished with five boards, saw her afternoon cut short when she left the game midway through the second half with an injury.   Further hampering the Eagles' efforts was a first-half injury to leading scorer Khadijah Sayyid that limited her to just eight minutes of action.  Sayyid was in the midst of a productive outing before leaving the game, registering nine points. 

Emory trailed by a four-point margin early in the second half before CMU center Lisa Murphy, the league's leading scorer, totaled six points of an 8-0 spurt that pushed the Tartans to a 12-point cushion, 54-42 with 14:57 remaining.  Murphy wound up the day scoring a game-high 29 points while pulling down 11 rebounds.  After a bucket by Tsao drew Emory to within 10 points,  the Eagles saw CMU go on an 11-3 scoring run, with Murphy scoring eight points in that stretch, to balloon its lead to 18 points, 65-47, with just under 10 minutes to go.  Back-to-back three pointers by the sophomore tandem of Shellie Kaniut and Fran Sweeney cut the Emory to deficit to 12 points, and after CMU boosted its lead to 16 points, Tsao personally accounted for all of Emory's point production during a 9-2 blitz that sliced the Tartans' advantage to nine points, 71-62, with 4:50 on the clock. However, that would be as close as Emory would get for the remainder of the contest.

Emory shot 41.1 percent (30-of-73) from the floor compared to CMU's effort of 52.1 percent (25-of-48).  The Tartans were sharp in their three-point shooting, draining 66.7 percent (10-of-15) while Emory converted seven-of-30.  CMU marched to the charity stripe on 33 occasions, hitting 25, while Emory sank seven-of-eight.  Carnegie Mellon finished with a 37-34 edge on the boards with junior Sarah Arington leading Emory in that department with a career-high nine rebounds.

Emory returns to action next Saturday (Feb. 28) when it closes out the season with a home date vs. Rochester.