DILLON, Mont. – The Northwest Nazarene women's basketball team defeated Montana-Western 60-56 on Saturday in an exhibition game.

The Nighthawks outscored the Bulldogs 16-10 in the fourth quarter to rally for the victory against the defending NAIA Division I national champions.

"It is good for us to play a really good opponent and a play a close game," NNU coach Steve Steele said. "Twice we had to get stops with the game on the line and we did. We needed this."

The Nighthawks jumped out to a 9-2 lead midway through the first quarter, making three of their first four 3-pointers. From there, though, NNU struggled to shoot the ball finishing 4-of-24 from beyond the arc.

NNU's defense, though, won the day. The Nighthawks forced 26 turnovers, held the Bulldogs to 20-of-54 shooting (37.0 percent) and had 17 steals. Senior Marina Valles had seven on her own.

"They do some really, really creative things offensively and they are very disciplined and if you aren't disciplined defensively they will get easy looks," Steele said. "We are a very, very young team and we had to learn from our mistakes and we did so that was good. In the second half, we basically won the game with our defense."

Erin Jenkins scored a team-high 15 points and pulled down eight rebounds, while Valles had 14 points, seven steals, six rebounds and three assists. Avery Albrecht added 10 points and four rebounds and Zoe Wessels had eight points and five rebounds.

NNU plays one more exhibition game at 7 p.m. Monday at NCAA Division I Montana State. The Nighthawks open their regular season at 1 p.m. MDT on Friday against Hawaii Pacific at Central Washington.