BILLINGS, Mont. – The Northwest Nazarene University women's basketball team was unhappy with its defensive showing in a loss at home Tuesday.

On Thursday, the Nighthawks showed just how good they could be.

NNU defeated Montana State Billings 66-52, holding the Yellowjackets to 28.1 percent shooting and forced 17 turnovers.

"As bad as we were on Tuesday, we were that good tonight," NNU coach Steve Steele said. "Especially on the defensive end. We didn't show up on Tuesday and tonight we played defense like every possession mattered."

The Nighthawks lost 79-73 to Central Washington on Tuesday, giving up countless open looks both beyond the arc and inside.

Against the Yellowjackets they made life much more difficult.

Montana State made 16 of 57 from the field, including 4 of 24 from behind the 3-point line.

"To hold them to 52 points, that I'm really proud of," Steele said.

Preseason GNAC player of the year Alisha Breen had her usual big night, pouring in 16 points and grabbing 18 rebounds – but she shot just 5 of 16 from the field and NNU threw everyone but the kitchen sink at her defensively.

"A lot of people guarded her. She is a beast," Steele said. "All we could do was hope to wear her out. Even when she missed, she'd get it back. Luckily we were able to hold the other kids down because it seemed like we had no chance of holding her down."

Lexi Tubbs and Carly Parker had the lion's share of responsibility defending Breen, a tweener who can post up smaller guards and take bigger post players out beyond the arc.

"We had to make her work and we did a good job of that," Steele said of NNU's game plan. "Because she had to work so hard to get hers that kind of takes some other kids out of rhythm. When she gets easy buckets, she can get everyone else involved easily."

While NNU struggled a bit offensively, the Nighthawks fed off their strong defense scoring 20 points off of turnovers.

Tubbs scored a game-high 18 points, while Danielle Jardine added 16 points and nine rebounds. McKenna Walker finished with 15 points and five rebounds and Avery Albrecht had seven points and four rebounds.

"We didn't score a ton because they tried to slow us down and they did a good job of it," Steele said. "But we didn't panic when we weren't scoring. We were relying on our defense and feeding off the defensive stops."

NNU is off until Thursday, Jan. 18 when it hosts Western Washington at 7 p.m. at the Johnson Sports Center.